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Couples faced with egg infertility almost invariably resist the most effective option available: egg donation. Many find the financial and emotional burden of egg donation too great and hold out too long in hopes of a genetic connection. A new, promising experimental procedure is bringing that hope closer to becoming a reality. Oocyte (egg) Reconstruction (also called Human Nuclear Transfer or Cytoplasmic Nuclear Transfer) involves transferring part of one woman's egg into another's. In this case, scientists use the healthy portion of a donor egg (the cytoplasm) to supplement the defective portion of the infertile recipient's egg and to help it survive, hence making one good egg. The infertile woman's genetic legacy is preserved because the nucleus which makes up 99 percent of the genetic material that determines physical traits in the embryo is made available from the infertile woman - the donor cytoplasm (which simply contains mitochondrial DNA that gives the egg energy to survive) contributes only one percent of the embryo's genetic makeup. Once the egg is fertilized, the embryo is implanted in the infertile woman's uterus.
Unfortunately, after many babies were born in the US using Human Cytoplasmic Transfer (HCT), ethical and medical complications spurred the U.S. government to curtail the procedure in 2001. Today, fertility scientists must file an investigational clinical trial application to continue research in this area, and New Hope Fertility intends to obtain approvals and continue our research. It is likely that with continued research this technique may prove its efficacy and safety in the future.
New Hope Fertility's Founder and Medical Director Dr. John Zhang was one of the few of scientists whose research resulted in a human pregnancy from Human Nuclear Cytoplasmic Transfer (HCT). Dr. Zhang led a team of HCT scientists at Sun Yat-Sen University of Medical Science in Guangzhou, China and in 2003 a Chinese woman became pregnant with triplets. The fetuses terminated in the 24th and 29th weeks, but their work remains unprecedented in advancing this important science.
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