Boosting Placental Function

If a foetus doesn't receive enough oxygen and nutrients from mum – placental insufficiency – its growth will be restricted, it may be born prematurely, and there may be life-long complications. A variety of maternal factors can increase the risk of placental insufficiency, such as smoking, high blood pressure, advanced age, and problems with the placenta’s attachment and development. If scientists could find a way to improve placental function within the womb – perhaps delivering factors to promote placental growth – it might enable risky pregnancies to reach full term and improve the health outcomes of the child. The image represents an important step towards that clinical goal. It shows the successful delivery, via ultrasound-directed injections, of therapeutic nanoparticles (yellow) containing growth factor genes to placental cells of a macaque. With the monkeys and their foetuses being unharmed by the procedure, the results now pave the way for more extensive safety testing.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image by Helen Jones/University of Florida
• Department of Physiology and Aging, College of Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
• Image originally published with no restrictions –  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Research published in Molecular Human Reproduction, November 2024