With so many couples out there just dying to have children of their own, pioneering fertility research has never been so important.
And for one couple in the Ukraine, who have just become parents using a unique new IVF procedure, this has never rung as true.
The unnamed couple, who were previously unable to conceive naturally, welcomed a daughter into the world on January 5.
The Kiev couple’s baby was conceived using a tweaked version of the three-person IVF method that has come to prominence over the past 12 months. The modified approach has been named 'pronuclear transfer'.
As part of the procedure, the mother’s egg was fused with her partner’s sperm; these were then transferred into a donor’s egg.
So, while this child has the genetic identity of her parents, she also carries a small amount of DNA from her female donor.
While this tot is the first baby to be born via pronuclear transfer, she is not the first baby to enter the world thanks to three-person IVF; that title is held by a child born in Mexico, last year.
