World-first IVF trial reduces risk of babies inheriting diseases • FRANCE 24 English

World-first IVF trial reduces risk of babies inheriting diseases • FRANCE 24 English

Well, for more, let’s cross to one of those who worked on it. Mary Herbert, professor of reproductive biology at Newcastle University. Thanks so much for joining us from London. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Between the time that uh this initiative was undertaken and the time that it’s come to fruition, it’s very short in medical terms. It’s just what a decade that you’ve been working on this. We started working on it in 2004. So that’s about 20 years ago. 20 years ago. Okay. Um Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we started applying for a license. So all of this research and treatment is licensed by the human fertilization embryology authority. So we applied for a license in 2004 and it took about 18 months to get that because it was a question of whether it was allowed under UK law and it was eventually decided it was and that was just to commence the research. So we first performed sort of proof of concept work. Could this in principle be done in the human and then we did we moved to preclinical research um and that published that in 20 2016 and then the UK law was changed in 2014 2015 to enable us to offer this treatment in principle should it be proven to be safe and effective. So our results and other findings were considered by an expert panel convened by the regulator um and um then they gave us a license to perform the treatment and that we started the treatment in 2018. So it’s now 2025 and we’re reporting the birth of of of eight babies. So I don’t think it’s happening very quickly. Right. eight eight babies who were born when just uh recently born in 2018. You you’ve been able to see them grow. Tell us a little bit. No, no, no. Um the oldest one is five years old and then they were many of them were just born in the last um year, year and a half or so. Just in the last year and a half. All in the UK. All all in the UK. Yes. So it’s the treatment is offered on the National Health Service here. So it is publicly funded um and it’s just available to to UK patients at the moment. So tell us just briefly about mitochondrial disease because I read on the Pastor Institute’s website it’s what one in 500 people here in France who have the potential to get it. Yeah. So so it’s it’s complicated inheritance. So the disease is caused by mutations in mitochondrial DNA and the mitochondria are very unusual. They are little organels within our cells. We have, you know, each cell has about 1,500. They contain their own fragment of of DNA which encodes 13 pro or 13 proteins involved in energy production. So the job of the mitochondria is to produce the energy our cells need to function properly. Um and that that that involves about,00 proteins 13 of which are encoded by the mitochondrial DNA. The rest are encoded by the nuclear DNA and they’re imported into the mitochondria. So in order to produce the energy ourselves required, the energy required for life, we need proteins encoded by the nuclear DNA and the mitochondrial DNA to work together. And the mitochondrial DNA is prone to mutations. And there are certain mutations that exist in the human population and maybe about 300 of them that cause known disease. And it’s a whole because the mutations cause um deficits in energy production. They usually affect cells or organs that require the most energy such as the brain and the heart and the sceal muscle. But there’s a vast range of symptoms and they can it you know the worst cases children will die in the first days of life. And in other cases it becomes you know just manifests in adulthood or or or or early adulthood and then becomes progressive. So it’s they are very very difficult diseases to diagnose um and and there are no cures right at the moment. So, and so you have this groundbreaking uh procedure with two uh the eggs of two women uh used for making the the baby in thanks to IVF treatment. Why is it only legal right now in in the UK and Australia? Um because I think in order to be able to do this to develop this technique there’s you need to have a regulatory system that’s permissive to the creation of embryos for research because you have to you know you can’t go straight into treatment with this as you might imagine. you need to be able to do it um um on a research basis to start with and that requires fertilization of of of of embryos, human eggs for research and in many countries that’s not allowed. So that becomes rather difficult then to develop these techniques and there may be other reasons why it’s not allowed. I think it’s been outlawed in France for recently I think I’m not so familiar with that but this is my understanding. So it wasn’t that it was specifically illegal here. It was just it wasn’t permitted under the under the law. So the law had to be changed in order for us to be able to do offer and treatment. So this is specifically with an eye as we’ve been discussing throughout this whole discuss interview uh towards mitochondrial disease. What can you say to assuage the fear of those who say this is going to be to make uh designer babies? I mean this this this technique is it’s bas it’s it’s sort of based on the fact that the mitochondria are inherited from the mother and this egg we see here in the screen that’s really packed full of mitochondria and we inherit the mitochondrial DNA only from our mother. So if we take out this nuclear DNA from the mom and the dad and put it in a donor egg then the genetic component there from the donor is just the mitochondrial DNA. It’s just those 13 proteins that will help the help the the the mitochondria to produce energy. Um, and so that cannot this technique cannot really be applied for for other genetic purposes, right? There’s no other genetic condition that that this sort of technique could could help with. Um, and it’s just swapping the mitochondria. So, it’s not changing any of the DNA code. It’s just swapping mitochondria. It’s not it’s not making any change to the to the to the genetic code either the mitochondrial or the nuclear. So it’s not it’s not it’s it’s it’s it’s a very particular type of man manipulation that changes the combination of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA so that we don’t we can avoid disease by replacing the faulty mitochondrial DNA and and and only that Mary Herbert uh I want to congratulate you and and the team at Newcastle University for this for this breakthrough. Thank you so much. Nice to talk to you. Thank you.

Eight healthy babies have been born in the UK using a new IVF technique that successfully reduced their risk of inheriting genetic diseases from their mothers, according to the results of a world-first trial published on July 16. For more on this, we spoke with Professor Mary Herbert, a reproductive biology expert who helped develop the technique.
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