Abstract

Over the past 40 years, much effort has been spent on developing non-invasive prenatal diagnostic methods. Since 1997, the progress of this field has been accelerated by the unexpected finding of extracellular fetal nucleic acids in maternal plasma. These developments have been translated into many novel genetic, epigenetic and gene-expression markers, and are expected to have a fundamental impact on the future practice of prenatal diagnosis.

Author affiliations

1. Y.M. Dennis Lo and Rossa W.K. Chiu are at the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences and the Department of Chemical Pathology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Prince of Wales Hospital, 3032 Ngan Shing Street, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong SAR, China.

Correspondence to: Y. M. Dennis Lo¹ Email: loym@cuhk.edu.hk

Published online 5 December 2006

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