UNAM students develop treatment to repair cleft lip in womb

Dental students from the National Autonomous University of Mexico are developing a method to treat cleft lip and cleft palate patients from the womb.

In a press release, Alexia Oliver Orive and Ángel Gustavo Bravo López stated that their new method could offer an early diagnosis of this condition, which until now has only been treated with surgical interventions.

“Technological progress and the discovery of some genes involved in this genetic condition are equally important, since not all patients with this genetic condition are eligible for surgical treatment,” stated Oliver Orive .

In the past five years, a series of genes involved in the fusion and development of the jaws have been identified, which could lead to a full assessment of this mutation in the genetic structure and allow scientists to modify gene transcription.

The new treatment could cure cleft lip patients without the need for a surgical intervention. “It would limit the number of cases considerably, reducing genetic predisposition and incidence rates in some countries,” they claimed.

The students proposed to inject T-box proteins into patients, thus avoiding the need for surgery.

For his part, the student adviser Alejandro García Muñoz commented that there were still some challenges to the treatment. The malformation must first be detected though a 3D or 4D ultrasound during the first weeks of pregnancy.

Another challenge will be to conduct a non-invasive intervention at a relatively low cost. However, the students still don’t have enough resources to conduct clinical trials.

The team will now seek to work with Mexico City hospitals so that the study of molecular biology and genetics applied to malformations in the oral cavity is given more importance.

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