First baby screened for breast cancer gene born

January 12, 2009

The first baby girl in Britain to have been screened before conception for a genetic form of breast cancer has been born, doctors said on Friday.

While a first in Britain, the strategy has been used elsewhere across the world to test for the cancer-related BRCA1 gene variant, and the technique has also been previously applied by British doctors to avoid the transmission of other cancers and diseases.

In the current case, doctors at University College Hospital in London had created a number of embryos through in vitro fertilization for the baby’s parents and screened them for the variant BRCA1 gene.(MSNBC)