The “Maternal–Fetal Immunology” issue of The Journal of Immunology features a brief review by Dr Francesco Colucci entitled “Uterine NK Cells Ace an “A” in Education: NKG2A Sets Up Crucial […]
The role of the maternal immune system in reproductive success
Congratulations to Dr Norman Shreeve and Prof Ashley Moffett for their review “Local immune recognition of trophoblast in early human pregnancy: controversies and questions” published in Nature Reviews Immunology. Reference […]
Sex differences in the intergenerational inheritance of metabolic traits
In a recent collaborative work between Miguel Constância and Susan Ozanne groups and published in the journal Nature Metabolism, the authors reviewed the importance of studying sex differences in response […]
Metabolomic identification of a novel, externally validated predictive test for gestational diabetes mellitus
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a condition where high blood sugar develops during pregnancy. GDM is one of the major preventable causes of stillbirth. Currently in the UK, women are […]
The imprinted Igf2-Igf2r axis is critical for matching placental microvasculature expansion to fetal growth
In a new study led by Miguel Constância published in the journal Developmental Cell, Ionel Sandovici and colleagues report the identification of a key signal that a fetus uses to […]
A maternal serum metabolite ratio predicts large for gestational age infants at term
Large size at birth is associated with complications in the mother and the baby. To complement their work on the metabolomics of fetal growth restriction (FGR) (Nature Medicine, 2020), Ulla […]
Congratulations to Sung Gong, Professor Steve Charnock-Jones and colleagues on their ‘shiny’ new paper.
A study reporting high-quality placenta transcriptome based on the POPS study is published in Nature Communications. The placenta is understudied and is commonly omitted from large-scale “-omic” analyses such as […]
Maternal natural killer cells at the intersection between reproduction and mucosal immunity
Evgeniya (Zhenya) Shmeleva and Francesco Colucci sum up the knowns of natural killer cells and infections during pregnancy in their paper published today in the Mucosal Immunology journal – the […]
Slowing of fetal growth and elevated maternal serum sFLT1:PlGF are associated with early term spontaneous labor
A study led by Ulla Sovio and Gordon Smith at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, published in The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, identified new biomarkers predictive of […]
The CD94/NKG2A inhibitory receptor educates uterine NK cells to optimize pregnancy outcomes in humans and mice
The uterus of mammalian species (including humans and model organisms such as mice) contains many immune cells that are critical for a successful pregnancy. In a new paper published in […]