Cambridge laboratory grows ‘mini-placentas’ for study into pre-eclampsia

Scientists at Cambridge University have grown “mini-placentas” to help them better understand pre-eclampsia.

Pre-eclampsia occurs in around six in one hundred first pregnancies, and can put the health of both the mother and baby at risk.

Professor Ashley Moffett from the university’s department of pathology, said most major “disorders of pregnancy” depend on “difficult to study” early placenta development.

Professor Moffett, together with colleagues from the Friedrick Miescher Institute in Switzerland and the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, used the “mini-placenta” – a cellular model of the early stages of the placenta – to provide a window into early pregnancy and “help improve our understanding of reproductive disorders”.

Successful pregnancy depends on the development of the placenta in the first few weeks of gestation. During this period, the placenta implants itself into the endometrium, the mucosal lining of the mother’s uterus.

Professor Moffett said “Most of the major disorders of pregnancy – pre-eclampsia, stillbirth, growth restriction, for example – depend on failings in the way the placenta develops in the first few weeks.

“This is a process that is incredibly difficult to study – the period after implantation, when the placenta embeds itself into the endometrium, is often described as a ‘black box of human development’.  Yet we understand so little about the interactions between the placenta and the uterus.”

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Posted by Karen Motley, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (jacquelinevance@chadlaw.co.uk), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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