Non-Invasive Prenatal Diagnosis With Individual Fetal Nucleated Erythrocytes In Maternal Blood

BACKGROUNDNon-invasive prenatal diagnosis with fetal cells in maternal blood avoids any risk to the fetus, and minimize sufferings of the mother. It would be more acceptable and widely applicable than the currently used invasive procedures, such as chorionic villus sampling (CVS) or amniocentesis. Fetal cells were identified in maternal blood a century ago. And it has been now well acknowledged that fetal cells can be isolated from maternal blood and used for non-invasive prenatal genetic diagnosis. Among all types of fetal cells in maternal blood, nucleated erythrocytes may be the target cells of choice for the purpose of non-invasive prenatal genetic diagnosis. Although some great advances have been achieved, non-invasive prenatal genetic diagnosis with fetal cells in maternal blood has been hampered by the fact that fetal cells present in maternal blood in rare amount.OBJECTIVETo develop a new strategy that allows non-invasive prenatal genetic diagnosis of single genetic disorders with fetal cells in maternal bloodMETHODSNucleated erythrocytes in maternal peripheral blood (10 ml per case) were enriched by the methods of triple gradient centrifugation and magnetic activated cell sorting (MACS) with anti CD71 mirobeads. Fetal nucleated erythrocytes were identified primarily with Hb F...