Free Access Articles
Surging ahead
2017 was a very successful year for RBMOnline, most notably with the announcement of an Impact Factor of 3.249, the highest yet achieved by the journal since its inclusion in the ranking nearly 10 years ago, and matched by improvements in other ranking metrics such as CiteScore, Article Influence and SNIP. This outcome reflects the increased quality of the papers published in the journal and places it in sixth position in the ranking of reproductive biology titles. As part of the continuing development of the journal, we welcomed Richard Anderson to the team of editors (Anderson, 2017), joining Mina Alikani, Juan Garcia Velasco and Martin Johnson, and allowing the Chief Editor more time to focus on strategic considerations.First birth following spindle transfer for mitochondrial replacement therapy: hope and trepidation
In this issue, Zhang et al. (2017) report the birth of a healthy boy after mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT) by spindle transfer to prevent transmission of mitochondrial disease from mother to child. The case was first publicized in the lay press (Hamzelou, 2016; see also editorial by Johnson, 2016) and then presented during the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Assisted Reproduction (ASRM) in October 2016 (Zhang et al., 2016a). It followed an earlier report of an unsuccessful attempt at MRT by pronuclear transfer by the same group (Zhang et al., 2016b).Meet our new Editor
Dr Mina Alikani PhD is a Clinical Embryologist, currently working as a Laboratory Director and consultant in New York, USA. Her interest in this field was piqued in 1978, with the announcement of the world's first IVF birth. Having recently immigrated to the United States, she entered university, choosing biology as her major. Mina's early enthusiasm for developmental biology and embryology led her to the laboratories of Professor Lajos Pikó at the local Veteran's Administration Hospital, in Northridge, Southern California, where, as a young volunteer, she learned how to work with mice and isolate and culture early mouse embryos.The time has come to radically rethink assisted reproduction
Results from more than 95% of assisted reproduction studies are rendered unusable by the standards of evidence-based medicine (EBM). Thus, technological or methodological bias in most studies underlies the decision of EBM technocrats to curtail the number of studies that are considered reliable and of acceptable quality for inclusion in systematic reviews. If this outcome seems to constitute a particularly punishing approach to data evaluation, consider the proposition that these technocrats actually may have been generous and that more than 99.9% of comparative studies in IVF should be ignored!The biological basis for defining bi-parental or tri-parental origin of offspring from cytoplasmic and spindle transfer
The bi-parental genetic state is not a given after assisted reproduction. This is based on a biological definition of parentage that concerns generational inheritance of genetic material. Often three or more individuals may participate in artificial reproduction. Only cytoplasmic and spindle transfer can result in the genetic tri-parental state. All other forms involving three or more assisting persons with no heritable genetic contribution must be considered differently. Can a cytoplasmic donor be a biological parent based on a potential contribution of mitochondrial DNA to the offspring? – only if the mitochondrial DNA sequence can be traced back to the donor, a phenomenon which may not be very common.Past performance of assisted reproduction technologies as a model to predict future progress: a proposed addendum to Moore’s law
The ultimate goal of IVF is to achieve healthy, single, live births following each single-embryo transfer. A timeline for this eventuality has never been defined. National implantation rates from 2003–2010 provided by the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies (SART) in the USA were evaluated. Regression analysis was applied to the annual trends. A high correlation was noted showing a linear increase from year to year ranging between 0.3% and 1.5% when maternal age was not higher than 42.Culture-induced chromosome abnormalities: the canary in the mine
Sabhnani and colleagues (2011) show that mosaicism and other post-meiotic chromosome abnormalities occur significantly more frequently in in-vitro grown mouse embryos than those grown in vivo. In this interesting work, the authors have provided a potentially robust animal model in which the effects of IVF methods on embryo development can be studied beyond blastulation and blastocyst cell number.
