Finding new treatments to delay preterm labour
Research institutes:
Institute of Genetic Medicine,
Newcastle UniversityProject dates:
Grant Awarded: 18 Jul 2019
Funding awarded:
Grant Amount (Borne’s share): £98,995
Grant Amount: £197,990
Existing drugs that delay preterm labour can’t be used for long periods because of their effects on the blood vessels of the womb and the placenta. To help find better treatments, Prof Michael Taggart and his team have conducted a detailed molecular study of the womb muscle tissue and blood vessels in mother and baby. Their research will help scientists find better treatments, with fewer side-effects, to stop babies from being born too soon.
The challenge
For many pregnant mothers who into preterm labour, there is no obvious explanation why. There are drugs which can briefly delay labour by relaxing the muscle tissue in the womb, but these drugs also come with risks to both mother and baby. This is because, as well as relaxing muscle tissue, they also relax the blood vessels in the womb and baby’s placenta. This can cause problems with blood pressure and reduce blood supply to the baby.
We need to find better treatments to pause preterm labour that are less risky for mother and baby.
The project
Prof Michael Taggart hopes to help find treatments to delay labour by stopping the womb muscle tissue contracting, without affecting the mother’s or baby’s blood vessels.
A major barrier to this is that we don’t fully understand the differences, at a molecular level, between the three key tissues involved – muscle tissue in the womb, blood vessels in the womb, and blood vessels in the baby’s placenta.
In this project, which ended in December 2023, Prof Taggart and his colleagues used state-of-the-art techniques to examine the differences between these three tissues. In a collection of tissue samples donated by pregnant women, they assessed the amounts of nearly 7,000 proteins and 20,000 genes. Some of this work was carried out on individual cells, to see if different types of cells in these tissues have different roles.
Their detailed work has provided a new understanding of the molecules that distinguish womb muscle tissue from the mother’s and baby’s blood vessels. This will help scientists to find drugs that can specifically target muscles to stop contractions, while leaving the blood vessels unaffected.
What difference will this project make?
We need to find better treatments that can help delay preterm labour, as current drugs have too many side-effects to be used for long periods of time. This research has provided the foundational knowledge needed to identify new or existing drugs that can target specific molecules in the womb muscle. The team hope that these drugs could be ready to test in clinical trials within three to seven years.
The hope is that this could eventually lead to new treatments that will help stop babies from being born too soon.
The funding from Borne and Action Medical Research has been transformative for our pregnancy-related research. It has enabled us to use state-of-the-art technology to reveal molecules that are enriched in specific tissues of the uterus and placenta. This opens new avenues for the development of much-needed new drug treatments for women with pregnancy complications such as preterm labour.
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This project is jointly funded by Borne and Action Medical Research
Project Team & Locations
Project Team
Professor Michael J Taggart, BSc PhD FRSB
Professor Stephen Robson, MBBS MRCOG MD FRCP
Dr Paul Ayuk, BSc MBBS PhD MRCOG
Professor David Simpson, BSc PhD
Other Locations
Institute of Cellular Medicine, Newcastle University
Reproductive Health & Childbirth Specialty Group, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust
Centre for Experimental Medicine, Queen’s University Belfast
