Japanese scientists found out how to conceive embryos from sex cells of three and more parents

12.11.2009

Recently Japanese scientists made a revolution in reproductive medicine. Conducting research dealing with reproductive ability of women after 40 involved in IVF, they decided to fuse their eggs with eggs of younger women. Results showed high success rates of egg artificial fertilization.

In the course of experiment scientists created several embryos from three donors’ genetic material: two women- egg donors and a man — sperm donor.

Low fertilization rates of patients over forty years old is conditioned by cytoplasm alterations which do not affect cell nucleus containing genetic material. Scientists tried to deal with this problem by transferring egg nucleus of elderly women into eggs, given by young female donors. Hybrid sex cell will contain genetic material of the first women, and a child conceived will be genetically connected with her.

Medics at the Saint Mariya Hospital in Kitakiushi performed such tests with 35 eggs, and 25 hybrids were viable. After fertilization, 7 cells were divided and developed to blastocyst stage. Scientists admitted that this is a very good result as fertilization rate of elder women’s eggs (non-hybrid) reach only 3%.

But the experiment was ceased otherwise it could be considered unethical and contradicts to the current rules of embryological researches in Japan. It is known that application of majority of reproductive technologies is prohibited or restricted by the law in this country.

Nevertheless, Atsushi Tanaka, the leader of scientists’ group, admitted that these eggs could be successfully transferred into uterus. Moreover, success rate of pregnancies could exceed those with non-hybrid eggs. These data can probably be useful for scientists from other countries.

Appeared in Lenta.ru and MedPortal.ru.