NIH invests $46m in placent-monitoring tech sponsorship

The National Institutes of Health said today it will grant $46 million in research awards for its newly created Human Placenta Project to support developing technology to assess placental function throughout pregnancy.

The program aims to improve pregnancy outcomes and lifelong health with the research and investigate issues like preeclampsia, preterm birth and stillbirth, which can occur because of problems with the placenta. The agency hopes the program will help to develop tools to monitor the placenta from the earliest stages of pregnancy to help identify such problems and intervene quickly.

“People usually take the placenta for granted. But when it doesn’t work the way it should, it can put the entire pregnancy at risk—along with the health of mother and fetus,” NIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development deputy director Dr. Catherine Spong said in prepared remarks.

The funds are being awarded to 19 different groups to support the development of safe, noninvasive methods to actively monitor the placenta at all stages of pregnancy, the NIH said.

“As essential as it is, there’s still so much we don’t know about the placenta. The good news is that science has advanced to such a degree that we have a better opportunity than ever before to learn how the placenta works. That knowledge may one day help improve clinical care,” Dr. Spong said in a press release.

Projects include diagnostic tools like magnetic resonance imaging and multiple forms of ultrasound being designed specifically to monitor placental health, structure and function, according to the NIH.

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