How IVF stopped my son inheriting family cancer gene
AS Danielle Taggar watched her mother battle breast cancer caused by a defective gene that she too had inherited, she was terrified of passing the same danger on to her children.
But she was able to celebrate son Noah’s first birthday last week safe in the knowledge he does not have the genetic mutation that caused five of her relatives to develop cancer.
He is one of the first children conceived using a ground-breaking IVF technique that involves screening the embryo before implantation.
Like Hollywood star Angelina Jolie, 24-year-old Miss Taggar inherited the faulty BRCA1 gene, raising her risk of getting breast cancer by 90 per cent. She will undergo a mastectomy by the age of 28 and then have a full hysterectomy in her thirties, meaning she had to plan to become a mother at a relatively young age.
She had already seen her aunts and cousins fight the disease, all the while knowing there was a real possibility that she would be next. Miss Taggar said: ‘I knew if there was a chance my baby could be free of the disease, I had to go for it.’
In 2013, she was told about a new IVF treatment that could help her conceive a baby without the mutation. ‘All I could think about was my baby and how I didn’t want him or her to suffer because of something in their genes I could have prevented,’ she told The Sun. ‘My partner Mason and I knew it was worth trying.’
Of the nine eggs she produced, which were then fertilised with the sperm of partner Mason Bradshaw, less than half survived. When experts tested for the faulty gene using pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, they discovered it in three out of the four embryos, leaving the couple with just one chance at having a baby.
Despite the odds being stacked against them, the couple, from Blaby, Leicestershire, discovered Miss Taggar was expecting in March last year and Noah duly weighed in at a healthy 6lb 8oz.
Figures from Cancer Research UK show there are about 72,400 women in the UK with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation. Men with the faulty gene have a raised risk of developing breast cancer themselves – around one in 100 – and those with the BRCA2 gene mutation carry a 25 per cent risk of prostate cancer. They would also have a 50/50 chance of passing it on to their children.
Miss Taggar said: ‘It is horrible to see your family members suffer with cancer and I’m pleased my son has a much lower chance of developing it. He can hopefully live a long, healthy and happy life without a heightened threat of cancer.’
Her mother Shauna, 50, who is now in remission following a mastectomy, hysterectomy and chemotherapy, said she wished the treatment had been available before she had her children.
‘He hopefully can live a long, healthy life’