The Health newspaper led aselection, “2015 Top 10 Medical Science &Technology News in China”, and unveiled the result on the last day of 2015. All the candidate newswere provided by authority and influential plane journal, E-journal or website plane journal related to innovative medical technology. Through the meticulously screening and review, academicians and authorities decided the final list.First healthy baby born without hereditary hearing loss benefiting from the preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) led by Professor Chen Zijiang’s team from the reproductive medical center of Shandong University is on the Top 10 list.

Attribute to the cooperation of Professor Chen Zijiang’s team and the team of Wang Qiuju, professor of otolaryngology from PLA general hospital, PGD was performed anda haplotyping based on noninvasive prenatal test (NIPT) with maternal plasma DNA for target mutations confirmation was constructed. Eventually, this first healthy baby in China was born on January 29, 2015.

Gao Fu, the academician and the deputy director of C.D.C, indicated that this achievement advances the secondary and tertiary prevention of hereditary hearing loss in our country toward primary prevention, block what cause it. In other words, this achievement is the milestone in Chinese prevention history.

In China, the birth defect notonly takesup a great portion in social disease burden, but also a tragedy for the defect baby’s family. “Every single improvement of technology makes our daily life difference,”GaoFu added, “that’s the main meaning of this achievement, and the primary reason why it was chosen to be the Top 10 news in medical technology.”

Reproductive medical center of Shandong University was established in 1980s and it has been one of leaders in the field of preimplantation genetic diagnosis in China. The center’s goal is to provide a family with the best chance at having a healthy baby and it has provided state-of-the-art services with various types of PGD available to many different families. Currently, it is able to perform PGD for many genetic conditions, such as single gene disorders and chromosomal abnormalities. The staffs have extensive experiences in different techniques, including Sanger sequencing, array CGH, STR linkage analysis and next-generation-sequencing (NGS).

Written by: Huang Caiyi

Edited by: Xie Tingting

Source: Reproductive Medical Center of SDU