CELL FREE FETAL DNA

Cell Free Fetal DNA



Cell Free Fetal DNA

Introduction

On April 27 2001 there was a genetic updata conference held at the Potter Center at Jackson Comminty College. In this conference they talk all the new thing that they can do with chromosomes in the human, the infection that these chromosomes have, and the new technology they have where they can work on the chromosomes. So in this year this updata is called the revolutionary revolution in genetics.

        The first thing they talked about was that this revolution start in the year 1958 in Biology, Medicine and Biotechnology. For example, they have been working on this human genome project for 15 yeas. They have thought that the human body has 3,100,00,000 nucleotides, which cost $3,000,000,000 a dollar per nucleotide. Another thing the thught was that the human body had 80,000 to 140,000 genes. But, by October 1, 1990 they found out that the human body has between 30,000 and 35,000 gene. Also withn this they have found that the human body has 80,000 proteins in it. Another thing they told us that there is no genetic basic for race and thaqt we all are 99.99% DNA the same. In addition to this they told us that all the chromosomes in the human body is load with bacteria DNA. So the reason for this revolution is so they can find treatment for all these medical disease, like typhoid, malaria, and aids, which does not have to do with genes.

Some laboratory is a leading pioneer in the enrichment of fetal cells from maternal blood with the aim of developing a non-invasive risk free form of prenatal diagnosis. By using the then novel Magnetic Activated Cell Sorting (MACS) we were among the first to detect fetal aneuploidies. The efficacy of this methodology is currently being explored in the large scale so-called, NIFTY study conducted under the auspices of the NIH, in which our group is participating. We have extended the scope of these investigations by analysing single micromanipulated erythroblasts by single cell PCR. These studies have shown that fetal genetic loci such as sex and rhesus D status can be identified with great reliability non-invasively. This analysis also irrevocably demonstrated that a large proportion of the erythroblasts in maternal circulation are of fetal origin. This aspect has now been incorporated into the next phase of the NIH study. Recent research from our laboratory has indicated that the traffic of fetal cells into the maternal periphery is significantly enhanced in preeclamptic pregnancies. We have now investigated whether this perturbation takes place early in pregnancy prior to the onset of disease symptoms, by performing a prospective study in which close to 100 pregnant women were recruited at around 20 weeks of gestation. By correlating the number of enriched erythroblasts with subsequent pregnancy outcome, we were able to show that the traffic of fetal cells was indeed significantly elevated in those pregnancies which developed preeclampsia, but not those which were affected by fetal growth ...