A team of scientists will join forces with colleagues at the Newcastle Fertility Centre at Life to work on techniques that could prevent the transmission of mitochondrial diseases from mother to child.

Currently there is no cure for the disorders. While IVF screening can reduce the chances of them being inherited, it cannot remove the risk entirely.

The new techniques to be studied involve transferring nuclear DNA from a mother’s egg to a donor egg containing normal mitochondria. This may be done, via different procedures, either before or after fertilisation.

The mitochondrial transfer involves taking the nucleus of an embryo from a mother with defective DNA and putting it into the egg of a woman with healthy DNA.

This healthy egg is then implanted into the first woman, allowing them to create a baby free of genetic disease.

A child produced this way would have DNA from two women and a man. The nuclear DNA, which influences characteristics such as sex, height and eye colour, would come from the mother and father.

But the child would also have a small amount of mitochondrial DNA from the healthy donor.

Scientists insist it would be wrong to talk of such children having two mothers as it made no impact on a child’s appearance or individual make-up.

Mitochondrial diseases come in a variety of guises. A number cause muscle-wasting conditions while others affect the nerves, eyes and organs.

Britain’s biggest research charity the Wellcome Trust has awarded a £4.4m grant to establish the centre, believed to be the most advanced of its kind in the world. Newcastle University is contributing a further £1.4m.

It will bring together groundbreaking laboratory studies and the expertise of clinical researchers who currently care for more than 400 patients with mitochondrial diseases at NHS specialised services clinics in Newcastle and more than 1,000 patients at the Newcastle Fertility Centre at Life.

To ensure continued research in this area the centre will nurture the next generation of scientists by developing a new training programme in mitochondrial medicine for outstanding young researchers.

Some pro-life campaigners have historically been against the research as they have said it is a step towards creating designer babies.

Prof Turnbull said: “I respect people’s views and we recognise the importance of public support for our work and so will ensure that we open our research for our patients, the public and policymakers to follow and see what we are trying to achieve.”

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