Post Genomics and Proteomics Approach to Develop, Test, and Deploy New Placental Markers for Early Detection of Preeclampsia and IUGR (PREGENESYS)
Partners:
- Diagnostic Technologies (Israel)
- Barking, Havering & Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust (UK)
- Medical University of Graz (Austria)
- Semmelweis University Hospital (Hungary)
- ImunoSTAR (Portugal)
- University of Milan (Italy)
- Foetal Medicine Foundation (UK)
- University f Zurich (Switzerland)
- Wallac Oy (Finland)
The Project:
This project has been an attempt, hitherto never tried, to combine the power of genomics, post genomics, and proteomics to systematically develop diagnostics for preeclampsia and IUGR as a fundamental requirement to cure the pathologies.
Preeclampsia (PE) - pregnancy induced hypertension accompanied by protein loss in the urine and intra uterine growth restriction (IUGR), affect in severe early-onset cases every 9th pregnant woman. Both are major causes for morbidity and mortality of pregnant women and babies, with long-term effects and risk of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Related healthcare costs reach 10% of all paediatric expenditures covering newborn intensive care and treating effects as blindness, mental and motor complications.
Placental biomarkers could be utilised for early detection of PE and IUGR risk, using simple blood tests of pregnant women. This will lead to preventing, at least reducing, severity of complications, enabling ample risk reduction/preventing approaches. Based on more than a decade of work including research on the placenta and on developing markers for prenatal diagnosis, the project aims to design innovative comprehensive approach to upgrade existing candidate markers and to develop large repertoire of new biomarkers and assess their effectiveness. The project will thus lead to rationalising prenatal and antenatal care and the design of diagnosis-treatment strategies.
The hypothesis of this project has been be tested through assessment of a large battery of novel biomarkers derived from genomics, post genomics and proteomics using biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, imaging, immunohistochemistry and tissue and cell cultures to verify the biological function. The biomarkers' diagnostics utility will be tested in multi-centre clinical studies across Europe. The project has succeeded to create affordable and ubiquitous diagnostics to test the risk to develop PE and IUGR, providing new way to manage pregnancy and design treatment strategies.