Annemarie Hennessy reports from the 4th Annual Human Placenta Project (HPP), hosted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
[person name=”Annemarie Hennessy” title=”” picture=”http://www.isshp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Annemarie_-_2015_-_Small-150×150.jpg” pic_link=”” linktarget=”_self” pic_style=”none” pic_style_color=”” pic_bordersize=”0″ pic_bordercolor=”” pic_borderradius=”0″ social_icon_boxed=”” social_icon_boxed_radius=”4px” social_icon_colors=”” social_icon_boxed_colors=”” social_icon_tooltip=” ” email=”” facebook=”” twitter=”” instagram=”” dribbble=”” google=”” linkedin=”” blogger=”” tumblr=”” reddit=”” yahoo=”” deviantart=”” vimeo=”” youtube=”” pinterest=”” rss=”” digg=”” flickr=”” forrst=”” myspace=”” skype=”” paypal=”” dropbox=”” soundcloud=”” vk=”” class=”” id=””]July 2017[/person]
Exciting Opportunity
I had the exciting opportunity to attend the 4th Annual Human Placenta Project (HPP) of the National Institutes of Health at the NIH campus at Bethesda in July 2017.
The Eunice Kennedy Schriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (the NICHD) decided in 2014 to launch an effort to understand placental biology in real time. Their focus is clearly on human translatable effort and spans a range of placental issues and diseases. This 4th meeting was entitled: Understanding human placental structure and function in real time. The focus on technology, and then Omics, and now greater (shared) interrogation of existing data still with a focus on real time human assessment was obvious in the work emerging from the currently and recently funded projects.
The focus of the first morning was the burgeoning interest and increasing understanding of safety of MRI in pregnancy. Given that this technique links structure with function in ways that older imaging techniques cannot, it is providing an increasing level of technical detail. It is great to see imaging technology studied in such a planned and invested way. The teams looking at placental MRI ( Ellen Grant from Harvard, Mary Rutherford from Kings College London) are looking at the physics, and linking to ultrasound parameters and biomarkers in a fully translational way. It is a clear goal of the HPP to see high quality research data to inform the use of this new imaging potential. How wonderful to see a proper investigation of the fundamental science as well as the important things in everyday practice such as patient position and acceptability of the techniques to our women.
The afternoon looked at a number of large scale biomarkers and /Omics studies as well as lipids (Charles Chalfant), RNA discovery (Zev Williams, Columbia) and liquid biopsy technology (Daniel Chu). The potential impact of sex on all data collected on the placenta was well explained by Clair Roberts from Australia. The team of Brian Cox and Shannon Bainbridge from Toronto provided an excellent demonstration of the power of partnership bringing clinical and computation scientists together. The clustering of biological results around 5 patterns of placental dysfunction starts to make some sense of the clustered but highly variable clinical states that we see as clinicians. Who gets the small baby in preeclampsia and why? I found these concepts fascinating and insanely logical.
I was particularly fascinated by Marina Sirotas’ (UCSF) presentation of the use of Omics data in ways that cross all of the cell sciences and show that the future of complex science is in great hands. Dr Dawn Dudley took us on a journey of data sharing and discovery with regard to Zika virus.
Innovative Technology
The second day, bought us right back to ultrasound in a most amazing way, again showing a level of placental and fetal blood flow analysis unimaginable a decade ago (Dr Abuhamad, East Virginia). It is more affordable and non-invasive and the benefit of better quantitative data which is easy to analyse can’t be underestimated, although the technology would need to be universally accessible. Of course safety is still in the mix. We then learnt of applying SIRI technology to placental imaging from our colleague in Oxford (Dr Looney). Deep learning was shown as a computational tool to decrease human bias and increased reproducibility of measures in real time. Not quite artificial intelligence, but you can see where this is going. Link that to biomedical microdevices and nanoneedle biosensors and you have a real scary future in biomedical advances (Drs Raeka Aiya, Cassidy Blundell, Julie Hunter and Marilyn Miller). Then of course we met Watson and all will be sorted.
The other great benefit of the targeting effort of the NIH is one of international leadership. The investment is large and the number of countries involved is increasing (UK, Australia, Canada and Israel) with others copying the strategy in a meaningful way (China and India). Dr David Weinberg as facilitator and director of the HPP did a wonderful job planning and chairing a meeting with lots of opportunities for networking.
We were able to see Director Diana Bianchi’s vision for better data sharing, for high quality clearing houses for placental information and sample sharing, for the use of new inter-professional partnerships such as with computational science and emerging technologies to provide a real time, cost effective and human-relevant future for the understanding of placental diseases. For me as an Australian delegate, it was wonderful to see the benefit of a strong relationship between the funding body and research teams in terms of the NICHD supporting a strategic direction in research and bringing the research teams along with them.
I congratulate the team for including a strong patient’s perspective from Tara Schafer who talked of the lived experience of stillbirth. A great way to keep everyone focused.
As a clinician/scientist with a very specific interest in preeclampsia, I could see the links between the basic science, animal research and clinical data and trials that we study in our daily research activities, and the technology being advanced by the HPP partners and projects. I look to the day when we understand placentas enough to interpret the clinical markers that have been recently discovered and treatments that we are developing, and offer women everywhere in the world a better chance at safe pregnancy.
Exciting Opportunity
I had the exciting opportunity to attend the 4th Annual Human Placenta Project (HPP) of the National Institutes of Health at the NIH campus at Bethesda in July 2017.
The Eunice Kennedy Schriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (the NICHD) decided in 2014 to launch an effort to understand placental biology in real time. Their focus is clearly on human translatable effort and spans a range of placental issues and diseases. This 4th meeting was entitled: Understanding human placental structure and function in real time. The focus on technology, and then Omics, and now greater (shared) interrogation of existing data still with a focus on real time human assessment was obvious in the work emerging from the currently and recently funded projects.
The focus of the first morning was the burgeoning interest and increasing understanding of safety of MRI in pregnancy. Given that this technique links structure with function in ways that older imaging techniques cannot, it is providing an increasing level of technical detail. It is great to see imaging technology studied in such a planned and invested way. The teams looking at placental MRI ( Ellen Grant from Harvard, Mary Rutherford from Kings College London) are looking at the physics, and linking to ultrasound parameters and biomarkers in a fully translational way. It is a clear goal of the HPP to see high quality research data to inform the use of this new imaging potential. How wonderful to see a proper investigation of the fundamental science as well as the important things in everyday practice such as patient position and acceptability of the techniques to our women.
The afternoon looked at a number of large scale biomarkers and /Omics studies as well as lipids (Charles Chalfant), RNA discovery (Zev Williams, Columbia) and liquid biopsy technology (Daniel Chu). The potential impact of sex on all data collected on the placenta was well explained by Clair Roberts from Australia. The team of Brian Cox and Shannon Bainbridge from Toronto provided an excellent demonstration of the power of partnership bringing clinical and computation scientists together. The clustering of biological results around 5 patterns of placental dysfunction starts to make some sense of the clustered but highly variable clinical states that we see as clinicians. Who gets the small baby in preeclampsia and why? I found these concepts fascinating and insanely logical.
I was particularly fascinated by Marina Sirotas’ (UCSF) presentation of the use of Omics data in ways that cross all of the cell sciences and show that the future of complex science is in great hands. Dr Dawn Dudley took us on a journey of data sharing and discovery with regard to Zika virus.
Innovative Technology
The second day, bought us right back to ultrasound in a most amazing way, again showing a level of placental and fetal blood flow analysis unimaginable a decade ago (Dr Abuhamad, East Virginia). It is more affordable and non-invasive and the benefit of better quantitative data which is easy to analyse can’t be underestimated, although the technology would need to be universally accessible. Of course safety is still in the mix. We then learnt of applying SIRI technology to placental imaging from our colleague in Oxford (Dr Looney). Deep learning was shown as a computational tool to decrease human bias and increased reproducibility of measures in real time. Not quite artificial intelligence, but you can see where this is going. Link that to biomedical microdevices and nanoneedle biosensors and you have a real scary future in biomedical advances (Drs Raeka Aiya, Cassidy Blundell, Julie Hunter and Marilyn Miller). Then of course we met Watson and all will be sorted.
The other great benefit of the targeting effort of the NIH is one of international leadership. The investment is large and the number of countries involved is increasing (UK, Australia, Canada and Israel) with others copying the strategy in a meaningful way (China and India). Dr David Weinberg as facilitator and director of the HPP did a wonderful job planning and chairing a meeting with lots of opportunities for networking.
We were able to see Director Diana Bianchi’s vision for better data sharing, for high quality clearing houses for placental information and sample sharing, for the use of new inter-professional partnerships such as with computational science and emerging technologies to provide a real time, cost effective and human-relevant future for the understanding of placental diseases. For me as an Australian delegate, it was wonderful to see the benefit of a strong relationship between the funding body and research teams in terms of the NICHD supporting a strategic direction in research and bringing the research teams along with them.
I congratulate the team for including a strong patient’s perspective from Tara Schafer who talked of the lived experience of stillbirth. A great way to keep everyone focused.
As a clinician/scientist with a very specific interest in preeclampsia, I could see the links between the basic science, animal research and clinical data and trials that we study in our daily research activities, and the technology being advanced by the HPP partners and projects. I look to the day when we understand placentas enough to interpret the clinical markers that have been recently discovered and treatments that we are developing, and offer women everywhere in the world a better chance at safe pregnancy.
