00:00Next are major medical breakthroughs giving hope to hundreds of women here in the UK who are
00:04carriers of a devastating and often fatal genetic illness. Eight children have now been born free
00:10of the incurable mitochondrial disease through a new technique pioneered by British scientists.
00:17The new method, which uses genetic material from three people, combines the egg and sperm from a
00:22mother and father with a second egg from a donor woman. The technique's been legal in the UK for
00:27a decade, but this is the first proof that it's leading to children born free of the disease.
00:33Our health correspondent James Gallagher has this report.
00:36This is the moment. DNA from a mum and dad injected into a fertilised egg from a second woman.
00:44The first step towards a baby made from three people.
00:51It's a way of preventing mitochondrial disease, which runs through the Kitto family.
00:55Kat's youngest daughter Poppy has the disease. Her eldest Lily may pass it on to her children.
01:03Poppy's in a wheelchair, is non-verbal and is fed through a tube. Around 120 children a year are born
01:10with mitochondrial disease. Other families have had babies die in the first months of life.
01:16It's impacted a huge part of her life and ultimately then our lives in terms of what we can do as a
01:23family. We have a lovely time as she is, but there are the moments where you realise how devastating
01:29mitochondrial disease is.
01:32These are mitochondria. They're found in nearly every cell of your body and if they're defective
01:38they starve it of energy causing disease. They're passed down only from mother to child through the
01:44mother's egg. So this is how the three-person IVF technique works. The mother's egg is fertilised with
01:51mother dad's sperm and becomes an embryo. And here in the middle are the pronuclei that contain the key
01:57DNA that shapes who we are. But it's also full of defective mitochondria that could cause disease.
02:05So a second embryo is made. This uses an egg from a donor woman who has healthy mitochondria. The
02:13pronuclei are removed from this donor embryo and mum and dad's DNA is moved in. It's now an embryo made
02:21from three people that can be implanted into the womb. But mitochondria contain their own small piece
02:27of genetic code so it means the resulting child inherits 99.9% of their DNA from mum and dad and around 0.1%
02:36from the donor woman. And this is a change that will be passed down to future generations.
02:43The treatment took place here at the Newcastle Fertility Centre. The eight babies all appear
02:48free of mitochondrial disease. None of the families are speaking publicly but in an anonymous statement
02:54one mother said, after years of uncertainty this treatment gave us hope and then it gave us our baby.
03:02We look at them now full of life and possibility and we're overwhelmed with gratitude.
03:08To see the relief and joy on the faces of the parents of these babies after such a long wait and
03:14such fear about the consequences for them from their family histories. It's brilliant to be able to
03:22see these babies live, thriving and developing normally.
03:26Lily is still 16 and has only just finished her GCSEs. But this pioneering approach is allowing her to
03:35imagine her own motherhood. It's the future generations like myself or my children or my cousins who
03:45can have that outlook of sort of a normal life. James Gallagher, BBC News.
03:52Well let's get more on that by speaking to Sir Doug Turnbull, one of the Newcastle team of scientists who
04:00led the trial. A really significant moment for you I'm sure. Just tell us how you're feeling about this
04:06and what this means. Well I'm thrilled about it. I've been looking after patients with mitochondrial
04:12disease for the best part of 40 years and there is no cure for mitochondrial disease. So being able to
04:19potentially prevent transmission of this, what can be a devastating disease as was shown in James
04:25Gallagher's piece, is a major breakthrough for the families.
04:30And what are the families saying? What's their feedback and feelings as well?
04:37One of joy, one of relief. I think for those families where this technique has been successful,
04:45it obviously completely changes things. These mothers know that they're at major risk of
04:52passing on serious mitochondrial disease to their children. So their reproductive options are very
04:58limited indeed and this technique allows them to have another reproductive option. I mean the paper
05:05shows that eight babies have been born. The evidence is that none of them will develop mitochondrial
05:13disease and the evidence is they're all developing normally. So for those families, as James has
05:21quoted one of the families, it's really been life-changing.
05:25Okay, thank you very much for sharing a little bit more on that really groundbreaking development there.
05:32That's Dr Sir Doug Turnbull, I should say, one of the Newcastle team of scientists who led that trial.
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