Noninvasive prenatal diagnosis using fetal cells in maternal blood

It has been a long-sought goal of human genetics to develop safe and reliable prenatal diagnostic procedures that constitute no risk to the fetus. At present, the safety of available methods is limited by the need to obtam fetal tissues through invasive means, such as chorlomc villus sampling (CVS) and amniocentesis, which constitute a risk to the fetus. One potential noninvasive approach for prenatal diagnosis is to use fetal cells that have entered into maternal circulation during pregnancy as a source of fetal material for analysis.