Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Low oxygen delivery from the mother to the fetus due to placental dysfunction is a common consequence of complicated pregnancies. It leads to abnormal fetal heart development and heart dysfunction in the offspring born from complicated pregnancies. Our laboratory demonstrated that hearts from offspring of complicated pregnancies, using a rat model of prenatal low oxygen, are unable to work properly due to changes in heart structure. We showed that those hearts experience lower recovery after an insult. Many interventions have been studied to improve oxygen delivery to the fetus, but the main problem when treating pregnant women is the ability of therapeutic agents to cross the placental barrier and directly affect the fetus, with potential toxic side-effects. Our laboratory has been testing early interventions based on treating the mother during her complicated pregnancy by treating the placenta. We have developed a therapeutic drug attached to specific nanoparticles (nMitoQ). By being attached to the nanoparticles the drug does not cross the placental barrier and treats the placenta without any exposure of the fetus. Recent studies from our laboratory showed a positive effect of nMitoQ treatment on blood vessel function in offspring from complicated pregnancies. However, the effect of nMitoQ treatment on offspring`s heart function is unknown. In this study we used hearts from adult offspring born from control pregnancies and pregnancies complicated with low oxygen delivery to the fetus and performed molecular analyses to test the heart structure. The heart function was evaluated via accessing the recovery rate after subjecting the hearts to an insult. We found that nMitoQ treatment did not affect the structure of the heart of offspring born from complicated pregnancies, but improved the heart function. This study demonstrates that nMitoQ provides a potential therapeutic strategy to improve heart function later in life of offspring born from complicated pregnancies.