Gene screening used in IVF for healthy baby

Researchers from National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) said the girl’s birth could also bring some hope to her seriously ill older brother, who was born two years ago and diagnosed at birth as having serious thalassemia or Mediterranean anemia.

Her umbilical cord blood, collected and preserved at delivery, contains the genes that can be used to treat her brother, with the aim of at least alleviating his symptoms even if a cure cannot be effected, they claimed.

Chen Su-yuen, a physician at NTUH’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, said both of the couple carry the thalassemia gene but neither have shown symptoms. However, the genes were passed onto the older boy and became dominant.

Chen said the couple went to his hospital for assistance with gene-screened IVF, in the hope that they could have a healthy baby and that the newborn’s umbilical stem cells could save the older child.

Hospital researchers later retrieved eggs and sperm from the couple and developed 16 embryos for further screening.

After careful inspections and comparisons, only one of the 16 embryos was determined to be carrying recessive pathogenic genes that will not develop into thalassemia and whose human lymphocyte antigen (HLA) is identical to that of the older boy, indicating that gene therapy can be carried out without rejection.

The stem cell transplant operation for the boy will take place in April or May, according to a NTUH statement.

Su Yi-ning, a physician at the NTUH’s Department of Medical Genetics, explained that when both parents carry thalassemia genes, their children have a 25 percent possibility of carrying the dominant gene, a 50 percent chance of carrying recessive genes, and only a 25 percent chance of carrying normal genes.

For HLA rejection among siblings, the percentage of non- rejection is 25 percent, Su went on.

“For a sibling to carry normal genes and have identical HLA to the brother, the chance is as low as 0.06 percent; and to carry recessive genes and the identical HLA, the chance is 0.18 percent,” Su explained, adding that the IVF success rate is about 25 percent.

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