Mom Marrow Can Cure Baby Diseases
Researchers extracted bone marrow cells from a pregnant mother and injected these into the developing foetus.
The donor cells were accepted by the foetus's growing immune system without the need for any drugs, the Journal of Clinical Investigation reports.
A successful transplant
The experiment carried out on animals is the first time that scientists have been able to successfully transplant a mother's stem cells into her offspring before birth, according to the Daily Mail.
The technique could be used to treat a range of genetic diseases, including sickle cell anaemia or bubble boy disease, the immune system disorder that leaves babies vulnerable to normally harmless infections.
Treating genetic diseases
Tippi MacKenzie, who led the study at the University of California - San Francisco, said: "This research is really exciting because it offers us a straightforward, elegant solution that makes foetal stem cell transplantation a reachable goal."
"We now, for the first time, have a viable strategy for treating congenital stem cell disorders before birth."
The earlier the better
Doctors say developing babies are ideal candidates for transplants because the risk of rejection is low and because they are less likely to need long-term drugs to suppress their immune systems.
However, most past attempts to transplant blood stem cells into a child in the womb have failed.
The new study found that a mother's immune response prevents foetuses from accepting donor blood stem cells. When the researchers transplanted stem cells from the mother, the foetus accepted them.
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