Grant: Project Grant

Preeclampsia is a serious pregnancy complication. It arises from a problem with the placenta, an organ that develops during pregnancy and provides the fetus with blood and nutrients so it can grow. When preeclampsia happens, blood pressure gets dangerously high, and can harm the mother's kidneys, liver, brain, and other organs. Even after the pregnancy, surviving mothers who had preeclampsia are much more likely to develop high blood pressure, heart disease, a blood clot in a vein, and stroke. Preeclampsia also has negative effects on the baby, including poor growth, low birth weight, preterm birth, stillbirth, and even infant death. Surviving infants whose mothers had preeclampsia are also at increased risk for later problems, including learning disorders, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, diabetes, congestive heart failure, and high blood pressure. Scientists proved that two proteins in the body are unbalanced when preeclampsia happens. Levels of a protein called sFlt-1 are too high, and levels of another protein called PlGF are too low. The imbalance between sFlt-1 and PlGF disrupts how blood vessels grow around the placenta and limits fetal growth. Right now, there is no cure for preeclampsia except for ending a pregnancy. Our project will develop a way to treat preeclampsia that uses very small particles, called nanoparticles, to deliver PlGF to the placenta and to reduce sFlt-1 level. We expect our treatment to enable blood vessels around the placenta to grow better and prevent the harmful fetal and maternal effects of preeclampsia. We will evaluate the safety and effectiveness of our new treatment with new experimental models that more closely reproduce the body during pregnancy than other available experimental models. Our results will deliver proof that our nanoparticles are suitable to treat preeclampsia and will open up new possibilities for using nanoparticles in maternal and fetal medicine.