The first baby born from a technique combining the genetic material of three different people has survived his first five months.
The infant was born of a “revolutionary” procedure aimed at avoiding genes related to a nervous system disease carried in his mother’s DNA, and was first reported in the New Scientist.
His mother, a 36-year-old from Jordan, told the magazine that she is a carrier for Leigh syndrome and lost her first two children to the disease, which destroys a newborn’s movement abilities and typically results in death within three years.
The disease transfers through DNA on the energy-creating mitochondria of a mother’s egg cell, so the “three-parent” birth method combines part of the mother’s egg with mitochondria of a donor.
The unnamed baby was born in April after a nucleus from one of his mother’s eggs replaced the nucleus in the donor’s egg, which was then fertilized with his father’s sperm and implanted in his mother.
Dr. John Zhang, founder of Midtown Manhattan’s New Hope Fertility Center, worked with the Jordanian couple in Mexico because the “three-parent” method has not been approved in the U.S. and south of the border “there are no rules.”
A spokesman for New Hope Fertility said Zhang had been working with the family since 2011 and could not comment on the legality of performing the procedure abroad.
He told the Daily News that the baby is healthy, and that the preferred name for the method is “nuclear transfer” rather than “three-parent.”
The center would not comment on whether there had been previous unsuccessful attempts at the method.
Another “three-parent” birth method involves fertilizing both a mother and donor’s egg and then replacing the donor egg’s nucleus, but the baby’s parents objected to that method on religious reasons — because it involves destroying a fertilized embryo — according to New Scientist.
Further details on Zhang’s research are scheduled to be presented at the American Reproductive Technology World Congress, which will be held at Columbus Circle’s The Mandarin Oriental starting Oct. 13.
