Miracle Drugs

[Lamplighter]

Here is a medical news topic that may well fit in this thread...

The headlines are current popular media are startling,
and may even generate visions of ménage à trois,

But the actual technique is more like supplying a miracle drug
to prevent a very rare (orphan) disease being inherited
by a baby from its mother.

There are lots of ethical issues too, but it is an issue that
will probably be decided in the UK via the popular press.

University of Oxford
Practical Ethics
Paula Boddington
June 29, 2013

Three person IVF

It was announced yesterday that the government is moving
towards allowing so-called three person IVF [In vivo fertilization]
for the creation of embryos free of mitochondrial disease.
<snip>

From Wikipedia: MELAS_syndrome

MELAS syndrome
Mitochondrial encephalomyopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes
This condition is inherited in a mitochondrial pattern,
which is also known as maternal inheritance and heteroplasmy.
This pattern of inheritance applies to genes contained in mitochondrial DNA.

Because egg cells, but not sperm cells, contribute mitochondria to the developing embryo,
only females pass mitochondrial conditions to their children.
Mitochondrial disorders can appear in every generation of a family
and can affect both males and females,
but fathers do not pass mitochondrial traits to their children.
Less commonly, the disorder results from a new mutation
in a mitochondrial gene and occurs in people with no family history of MELAS.

There are a couple of ways of doing the new procedures,
involving 3 persons (#1, #2, and #3 below)

Basically the new proposed techniques take the nuclear DNA
of a egg from the affected mother[#1] and from the father [#2].

A donated egg is also taken from a non-affected woman [#3],
Its nuclear DNA is removed, leaving behind healthy mitochondrial DNA.

The nuclear DNA of the two parents is then transplanted into the body of the healthy egg,
resulting in an egg which has the DNA of the father and the affected mother,
and the mitochondrial DNA from the donor woman.

Pic from here
*167