Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy

Mitochondrial replacement therapy, also called mitochondrial donation, replaces the mitochondria in one or more cells to prevent or treat disease. It began as a form of in vitro fertilization in which some or all of a future child mitochondrial DNA comes from a third party donor, used when a mother carries genes for mitochondrial disease, and it is approved for clinical use in the United Kingdom and Australia, where several babies have been born using the technique. A second application uses a patient own mitochondria to replace damaged mitochondria in injured tissue, including in clinical research treating newborns with heart damage in the United States.