Research Overview
Applying Precision Medicine Approaches and Building Tools for Placental Biology Research
Research Focus 1
Applying Precision Medicine Approaches to link the Prenatal Environment to Infant and Child Health
Precision medicine is an innovative approach that tailors disease prevention that incorporates information about genes, environments, and lifestyles. Precision medicine can improve prenatal care because the traditional "one-size fits all" approach to prenatal care cannot capture the complexity of maternal-fetal biology. We are currently deploying a precision medicine approach through integration of molecular signatures of prenatal exposures and outcomes. Molecular signatures are sets of biomolecular features generated from ‘omics data, including epigenomic, metabolomic, or proteomic data that can be used to either gain mechanistic insight or for prediction in the context of clinical phenotypes We have generated placental molecular signatures in relation to a variety of relevant exposures and outcomes, which we are in the process of integrating:
Prenatal Exposures
Phthalates
Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons
Organophosphate Esters
Maternal Factors
Prenatal Vitamin D levels
Maternal Stressful Events
Perinatal Outcomes
Preterm Birth
Research Focus 2
Building Multi-omic networks to better understand placental biology
As we generate, analyze, and integrate our placental omics datasets, we have used our data to build networks to better understand placental biology. We have made these networks available in the Placental Computational Tools Section of our website. We hope these tools can be useful for other researchers in this space! To date, we have developed two tools:
Placental Transcriptional Regulatory Network
This tool can help explain relationships between transcription factors and target genes in the placenta.Comparative Transcriptomic Placental Model Atlas
This tool summarizes relative gene expression in different cell models of the placenta. This can aid researchers in selecting the best model system for their experimental question.