Oregon Public Broadcasting

Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University say they’ve developed a new form of genetic therapy. As Kristian Foden-Vencil reports, the hope is to prevent diseases in children before they’re born.

The therapy focuses on diseases like diabetes and some cancers, which are passed from a mother to her child through mitochondrial DNA.

Mitochondrial DNA is found in a cell’s cytoplasm, not the nucleus.

Doctor Shoukhrat Mitalipov says researchers took an egg from a monkey, removed the DNA from the nucleus, but left the healthy mitochondria DNA in the cytoplasm.

Nuclear DNA was then brought in from another monkey and the resulting egg was implanted and brought to term.

Shoukhrat Mitalipov: “So she could have her own children. But her mitochondrial genes, which are about 37 genes, will be replaced by healthy genes donated by a healthy egg donor.”

Mitalipov believes that if clinical traisl in human are successful, the new gene therapy could be ready in 5 years.