New Funding for Research on the Placenta and Neurodevelopment in the BiSC Project: Project PERGOLA

We are pleased to announce that we have secured new funding that will allow us to further research into the role of the placenta in brain development and the early detection of neurodevelopmental complications.

Traditionally, the placenta has been an understudied organ in the context of mental health and neurodevelopment. However, recent evidence suggests that this organ, which connects the mother to the fetus, plays a fundamental role in the regulation of brain development and may significantly influence the risk of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. The placenta not only supplies essential nutrients and oxygen to the fetus, but is also a highly adaptive organ that protects the fetus from adverse environmental factors, and also acts as a regulator of immune and neuroendocrine functions, affecting brain development from the first stages of pregnancy.

The PÈRGOLA project, thanks to the funding granted by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (within the Strategic Action in Health plan), aims to advance the understanding of this prenatal influence. The project will focus on the study of transcriptional expression patterns (gene expression) in the placenta and its relationship with neurodevelopment from the third trimester of pregnancy to four years of life. Using placental samples and longitudinal data from 400 boys and girls in the BiSC cohort, this pioneering project seeks to 1) understand how the placenta contributes to trajectories of brain development and mental health during childhood by identifying the biological processes involved, and 2) identify biomarkers that allow the early detection of neurodevelopmental disorders.

This ground-breaking project does not only focus on extreme cases, but examines a broad spectrum of neurodevelopmental outcomes in a diverse population, taking into account factors such as gender and genetics. In addition, we will use cutting-edge technology to study both coding genes and other non-coding RNA molecules, which are also key in brain development. It should also be remembered that we had already collected information from the placenta thanks to different sources of funding (we measured epigenetic marks, small non-coding RNAs, the presence of pollutants, etc.), so this project provides us with another layer of information to understand this organ and its influence on maternal-fetal health.

Ultimately, this pioneering project will offer us a deeper understanding of prenatal influence on brain health and neurodevelopmental trajectories, opening new avenues for prevention and precision medicine in early childhood.

Thank you all for your participation and continued commitment.

This news has been written by Marta Cosin, researcher of the BiSC project.