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They develop an artificial placenta able to explain some problems during pregnancy
British scientists announced Wednesday that they had created an artificial placenta very early, which could serve as an experimental model to understand why some women suffer from complications during their pregnancy or even interruptions.
When the placenta does not work properly, "This can cause serious problems, such as preeclampsia or spontaneous abortion (…) But our knowledge of this important organ is very limited," said Margherita Turco, the main author of the study, published in the scientific journal Nature, in a statement. 19659003] Normally, medical research begins by experimenting on animals with the potential and reliability of new treatments for humans. But "the human placenta is very different from the rest of the species," Ashley Moffett, a professor in the department of pathology at the University of Cambridge, who has been working for more than one year, told a news conference. 30 years in placental cell culture.
His team succeeds in isolating and culturing trophoblast cells, which form only a few days after fertilization, to become the placenta and the umbilical cord. in vitro the functioning of real and secreted hormones and proteins that alter the woman's metabolism during pregnancy.
They hope that this model will better study abnormalities in the development of the placenta, likely to prevent the correct implantation of the embryo. or cause problems during pregnancy.
According to the World Health Organization, some 47,000 women died in 2015 cancel due to preeclampsia, characterized by high blood pressure, badociated with an excessive presence of protein in the urine.
The artificial placenta could also explain how the drugs taken by the mother act on the placenta and why infections cross this natural barrier – like the Zika virus – and others do not, like dengue, but similarly .
Last year, the same Cambridge team succeeded in restoring the uterine lining, the tissue that covers them inside the lining of the uterus and in which the placenta is implanted during pregnancy.
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