Testing a new immunotherapy to prevent preterm birth
Research institutes:
Department of Women and Children’s Health,
School of Life Course and Population Sciences,
King’s College LondonProject dates:
Grant Awarded: 24 Jan 2025
Funding awarded:
Grant Amount (Borne’s share): £122,749
Total award: £245,498
Sometimes the mother’s immune system in the womb can reject the unborn baby, leading to preterm birth. In this project Prof Rachel Tribe and her team are testing a new cell therapy they have developed, which can suppress the immune system in the womb. Their research could help prevent preterm birth in women at high risk, and stop babies being born too soon.
The challenge
One reason why some pregnancies end in miscarriage or pre-term labour is because of the mother’s immune system. A person’s immune system is trained to recognise anything ‘foreign’ (i.e. not the person’s own body), as a potential threat.
From the perspective of a pregnant woman’s immune system, the unborn baby and their placenta in the womb is ‘foreign’ and should be attacked. To prevent this from happening, normally the immune system in the womb is suppressed in early pregnancy.
But scientists believe that sometimes, the immune system in the womb is not fully suppressed, which could lead to some babies being born prematurely. We need to find ways to stop the mother’s immune system from rejecting the baby and prevent babies from being born too soon.
The project
Scientists are developing advanced cell therapies for a range of health conditions that change the way the immune system behaves. Prof Rachel Tribe and her colleagues think that such a cell therapy could potentially be used as a treatment to prevent preterm birth in women at high risk.
In this project, Prof Tribe and her team will be continuing the work they started with previous funding from Borne and Action Medical Research. The team are using special cells isolated from placentas donated by women who gave birth at full term.
In this project, the team will use these cells in mice to see if they can prevent preterm birth caused by infections and inflammation. They aim to determine the optimal dose of cells to prevent preterm birth.
They are also studying the impact of these cells on the health of both the pregnant mouse and the unborn pups. They are particularly interested in whether these cells can prevent brain damage in the pups caused by inflammation.
What difference will this project make?
We need to find ways to prevent infections and inflammation from harming the developing baby. In this project, Prof Rachel Tribe is extending her team’s work to test and develop a new cell therapy, which they hope could be used to prevent some preterm births. A similar approach has been successful in treating other conditions caused by an overactive immune system.
The team hope that, if all goes well, the research could lead to a new treatment which could be tested in human volunteers within the next few years.
Ultimately, this innovative approach could help to prevent preterm birth, and help more babies be born healthy and at the right time.
Through our preclinical studies, we aim to provide further evidence for the use of cells for maternal/foetal immunomodulation and prolongation of gestation. This, coupled with data from ongoing cell therapy clinical trials focussed on other inflammatory disease in humans, will provide essential evidence to support future studies in human pregnancy and preterm birth.
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This project is a specialized research grant
jointly funded by Borne and Action Medical Research (AMR)
