MODCAST

Dr. Sam Mesiano, an investigator at the March of Dimes Ohio Collaborative Prematurity Research Center, discusses the enzyme that leads to progesterone withdrawal and labor in cases of infection-related preterm birth - and how this enzyme discovery can be used to revive progesterone therapy to delay or stop preterm birth.

Dr. Alexiane Decout, an assistant professor in immunology at the University of Warwick, and Dr. David MacIntyre, one of the directors of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Imperial College London, discuss the biological advantage of Lactobacillus Crispatus, the most in-demand of all vaginal microbiome bacteria, which is protective against preterm birth. Read the preprint here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.13.612838v1.full

March of Dimes Senior Director of Research Operations Jonathan Cherry on March of Dimes research grants and awards.

Dr. Nima Aghaeepour, an investigator at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Stanford, and Dr. Sarah England, the director of the Center for Reproductive Health Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine, discuss a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) model that found that sleepers and movers have a 52% reduced risk of delivering early while those sleeping and moving less have a 44% increased risk of delivering early. 

The 2024 winners of the March of Dimes Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Research Awards, Dr. Elizabeth Enninga and Dr. Mara Murray Horwitz, discuss their areas of study. Dr. Enninga, an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Immunology, at Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic, explains how cell free (cf) fetal DNA triggers labor and preterm birth, and how understanding more about this process can help prevent early labor and more effectively induce labor. Dr. Murray Horwitz, a primary care doctor at Boston Medical Center and an assistant professor of medicine at Boston University, discusses barriers women with a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy (HDP), like preeclampsia, face in achieving cardiac and overall health after childbirth, and delves into an intervention called patient navigation that can lessen those barriers.

Dr. Alan Flake, the Director of the Center for Fetal Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and 2021 March of Dimes Prize recipient, discusses the most impactful pursuits of his career: fetal surgery, the artificial womb, and in utero stem cell therapy.

Dr. Brice Gaudillière, an investigator at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Stanford University, discusses a breakthrough Machine Learning (ML) algorithm that makes reliable predictions about labor onset, preterm birth, and preeclampsia and also identifies the biological markers supporting those predictions.
 

Dr. Marisa Bartolomei, a University of Pennsylvania professor of cell and developmental biology, co-director of the university's Epigenetics Institute, and winner of the 2024 March of Dimes Richard B. Johnston, Jr., MD Prize, on discovering one of the first imprinted genes, making connections between imprinted gene mutations and developmental disorders, and uncovering the exact pathways of gene imprinting defects: namely, abnormalities in DNA methylation.

Former Stanford PRC collaborator Dr. Jonas Miller, now a Psychological Sciences Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut, discusses how the stress a woman experiences before pregnancy is associated with the way her child's brain functions around three to five years old. Those children, Dr. Miller found, have a harder time with impulse control.

Dr. Tim Hand, a March of Dimes researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, discusses the link between breast milk and a life-threatening preterm birth-related condition called necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). As it turns out, not all breast milk is protective against NEC.