They develop an artificial placenta able to explain some problems during pregnancy

British scientists announced Wednesday that they have created an artificial placenta very early, which could serve as an experimental model to understand why some women suffer from complications during pregnancy or even interruptions.

When the placenta does not work properly, "it can cause serious problems, such as pre-eclampsia or spontaneous abortion (…) But our knowledge of this important organ is very limited," said Margherita Turco , lead author of the study. in the scientific journal Nature.

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 managed to isolate and grow trophoblast cells, which formed only a few days after fertilization and then became the placenta and umbilical cord.

Scientists have created what they called "miniplacentas", which reproduce in vitro the functioning of the real ones and secrete the hormones and proteins that alter a woman's metabolism during pregnancy.

They hope that this model will better study abnormalities in placental development, which may prevent the embryo from implanting properly or causing problems during pregnancy.

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 47,000 women died worldwide in 2015 due to preeclampsia, characterized by high blood pressure, associated with an excessive presence of protein in the urine.

The artificial placenta could also explain how the drugs that the mother takes act on the placenta and explain why some infections cross this natural barrier – like the Zika virus – and others do not, like dengue fever, although similar.

Last year, the same Cambridge team succeeded in reconstituting, in a uterine lining culture, the tissue that lines the inner lining of the uterus and in which the placenta is implanted during pregnancy.