In the UK, human babies with the DNA of three people have been born.
The babies were conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF), but with the special condition of using reproductive organelles from more than two people.
To explain, tissues from the eggs of healthy female donors were used to create embryos free from harmful mutations, all while allowing the original/intended mother and father to have their nuclear material develop inside the egg healthily throughout the gestation period.
The method is called mitochondrial donation treatment (MDT) or mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT), and the whole process basically involves having the nucleus of a fertilized egg from a couple removed, and then placed inside an egg from a donor female — one which has a healthy mitochondria (the part of the cell that helps generate energy required to power the cell's biochemical reactions).
While it seems pretty bizarre, researchers have stated that the reason for this process is so that babies can be born without genetic disorders, which is something that is prone to occur in eggs that have mutated or unhealthy mitochondria.
This makes even more sense when you consider that humans inherit all of their mitochondria from their biological mothers, and that any mitochondria in the egg cells that have mutations could impact the development of the fetus and life quality of a human after birth.
Another thing to consider is the fact that human cells have thousands of mitochondria that, when functioning properly, generate the vital energy needed to keep organs functioning. On the flipside, mutated mitochondria can easily lead to problems in energy-hungry organs such as the brain, heart, liver, as well as the muscles in the body.
Right now, about one in every 6,000 babies are affected by mitochondrial disorders — something MDT therapy hopes to solve.
And despite involving three separate "parents", however, experts have said that 99.8 percent of the baby's DNA will come from its intended mother and father, which could influence prospective parents to choose this method of conception so their babies have a higher chance of being healthy.
Still, this form of therapy is very much novel, and there are risks involved, for sure.
For example, there is no guarantee that a baby born via MDT therapy will not have mutated mitochondria. In some cases, an embryo might have some of the original mother's mitochondria multiply exponentially inside the donor egg — a process called "reversal" that hasn't been given an explanation yet.
Also, there are ethical concerns regarding MDT births. In the UK at least, a child born using the method will not have any rights to information about egg donors, save for some details that do not give away the identity of said donor. And similarly, neither will donors have any parental rights or responsibilities towards the child.
All things considered, such a method of conception holds plenty of potential, especially where the health of developing babies is concerned. But for now, we can only gather insights and data from what we can readily observe.
“So far, the clinical experience with MDT has been encouraging, but the number of reported cases is far too small to draw any definitive conclusions about the safety or efficacy,” said Dagan Wells, a professor of reproductive genetics at the University of Oxford.
While these MDT babies are the first to have been born in the UK, they are not the first in the world. In 2016, an MDT baby was born in Mexico after U.S.-based doctors assisted a Jordanian couple with an IVF conception using MDT.
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