Mary Herbert
Professor of Reproductive Biology at Monash University. She also holds an appointment at Newcastle University and Newcastle Fertility Centre, UK. She is an author on the research.
As a reproductive biologist, I find it enormously gratifying that a new assisted reproductive technology can be used successfully to enable women with very high levels of disease-causing mitochondrial DNA to have children with a greatly reduced of developing the disease.
The findings give grounds for optimism. However, research to better understand the limitations of mitochondrial donation technologies will be essential to further improve treatment outcomes.
In previous lab-based research, we found that carryover of even a small amount of maternal mitochondrial DNA during the pronuclear transfer procedure can increase to very high levels in embryonic cell lines.
For this reason, mitochondrial donation technologies are regarded as risk reduction treatments. Our ongoing research seeks to bridge the gap between risk reduction and prevention of mitochondrial DNA disease.
In the UK, mitochondrial donation treatment is performed within a strict regulatory framework under a licence granted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. I hope that the successful outcomes reported today will help in navigating the rather complex regulatory system here in Australia.