The Milestone of Non-invasive Prenatal Identification of Chromosomal Abnormalities in Fetal Trophoblasts Recovered from Maternal Blood.

Two recent studies demonstrated that array CGH and NGS allow identification of chromosomal abnormalities in fetal trophoblasts circulating in maternal blood. This remarkable breakthrough paves the way for an improved assay that supersedes the performance of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in cell-free fetal DNA. Furthermore, it is foreseeable to expand the use of this new genomic analysis in trophoblasts to uncover single gene mutations of clinical significance prenatally.