Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Browse Recent ideas

The last few years have shown remarkable progress in image quality and new methodologies of placental MRI. Can we identify an approach and application that could be a 'trailblazer' in demonstrating the value of MRI. Ideally, this would affect a relatively common pathology and meet needs otherwise unfulfilled by non-invasive tests.

It would be interesting to investigate whether the mutational signature of the fetal placental surface may correlate with susceptibility to develop cancer across lifetime.

One could interrogate and compare the mutational signatures of both the fetal surface as well as the maternal surface of the placenta and to look for environmental carcinogenic footprints as well as endogenous oncogenic signatures such as APOBEC, etc…... more »

One such topic concerns the etiology of autism and autism spectrum disorders, for which the placenta may be involved. Recent research has identified an increased incidence of trophoblast inclusions in the placenta of children that have developed ASD. This lesion also may be associated with, or indicative of altered zinc nutriture, as zinc deficiencies also have been observed in children that develop ASD

The field of ultrasound imaging has a robust technical research community that develops novel ultrasound technologies that could be applied to placental imaging. However, much of these technological developments never make it to clinical adoption because of a lack of collaboration involving the combination of industry, technical ultrasound researchers, and clinicians. Specifically, the latest clinical ultrasound systems... more »

Very little knowledge is there at present regarding placental previa or abruption. Especially concealed placental abruption is a hard to identify condition where in most cases the damage is already done to both mom and baby before diagnosis. Even a medical examination of the placenta is not sufficient enough to find the root cause of abruption. In addition, there is insufficient test to check the functionality of the... more »

Very little is known about development of the human umbilical cord and insertion into the fetal abdominal wall, yet developmental abnormalities contribute to multiple recurring embryonic malformations, including limb-body wall complex, pentalogy of Cantrell and OEIS (omphalocele, exstrophy of bladder or cloaca, imperforate anus, and spinal defects). In addition, anomalies are more frequently associated with a two vessel... more »

More research to decrease the incidences of placental insufficiency and placenta previa resulting in Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy in the baby.

Hi HPP team,

 

I would like to suggest that there be a larger effort to collect placentas from normal pregnancies into a biobank that could serve as a resource for investigators carrying out projects on disease states. Ideally, these placentas would have pathology and histopathology findings associated with them, and come from a variety of settings.

Thanks,

lisa

In humans, studies that consider the placenta as a mediator of the maternal environment (e.g., biomarkers, exercise) on pregnancy outcomes and in diverse populations are lacking.

The hypothesis is that a symbiotic relationship exists between the placenta and the fetal brain. A healthy placenta leads to healthy brain development in the fetus. Studies are warranted to find the correlation between the placenta and the fetal brain and the various clinical biomarkers and circulating factors aiding this process and the hypoxia-ischemia pathway

The human placenta is unique among mammals. We lack understanding of its immune complex and the innate responses that prevent or enable vertical transmission. The COVID pandemic highlights this gap. Where previous coronavirus outbreaks were associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes, SARS-Cov-2 does not appear to pass the placenta and negatively impact fetal development. Interestingly, several groups have highlight SARS-Cov-2... more »

Spiral artery remodeling is essential step of establishing uteroplacental circulation in human pregnancy. In early pregnancy, extravillous trophoblasts invade into maternal spiral artery, forming endovascular trophoblast plugs, and these endovascular trophoblasts undergo a phenotypic switch to express CD56, a NK cell marker. Little effort is made to understand what happen to these endovascular trophoblasts after initial... more »

Identify epigenetic signatures in the methylation of cell free DNA and correlate with placental function.

Like all biological structures, the placenta is the outcome of a historical evolutionary process. Thus, in order to understand the development, structure, and (dys)function of the placenta we must reconstruct the developmental evolutionary history of the maternal-fetal interface. The NICHD Human Placenta Project covers a wide breadth of research topics, but a noticeable gap is the lack of evolutionary studies that explicitly... more »

The placenta is a unique organ, made up of cells with 2 similar yet distinct genetic makeup, maternal and fetal. Further, a placenta can be either a female or a male placenta, corresponding to the sex of the fetus. Understanding the role of sexual dimorphism of the placenta in terms of its development, maturation, function and basic physiology is needed but sorely lacking. Such insights will provide the grounding for... more »