Funding outcome

Preeclampsia (PE) is a common pregnancy disorder that causes serious disease (and in severe cases death) in pregnant women. It is one of the most common reasons for induced preterm delivery and thus can also lead to illness or death in babies. Both the cause and course of the disease remain poorly understood yet evidence exists that reduced blood vessel function contributes to the development of high blood pressure in this disease. It is thought that this might be due to small particles that are released from the placenta into the mother's bloodstream. We recently made an exciting discovery of a new pathway involving a scavenger receptor that disrupts the normal function of blood vessels in women with PE. Interestingly, we also showed that placental particles are able to disturb the function of blood vessels from rats by this same receptor. In the current proposal, we will identify how this abnormal blood vessel function develops via a specific receptor in PE. We will further study whether the small placenta-derived particles have a different effects if they are from a placenta of healthy pregnant women compared to particles from placentas of women with PE. We will use human cell cultures and human blood vessels (from control and PE pregnant women) to test our theories. Changes in blood vessel function will be studied after incubation with the small placenta-derived placental particles. The results obtained from the current studies will increase our understanding of the development of PE in order to develop new drug interventions to treat this disease and improve the health of mothers and their babies.