Research
We are interested in how the innate immune system works in all aspects of women's health. We focus on the reproductive system, where our main focus is pregnancy, and how the mother's immune system changes during pregnancy to support and create tolerance to the growing baby, and how this goes wrong in pregnancy complications including preeclampsia, fetal growth restriction and stillbirth. We hope that by better understanding how the mothers immune system works in pregnancy, and how it goes wrong, we can help find new treatments to prevent these pregnancy complications, and protect the lives of mothers and their babies.
Decidual macrophages
Efferocytosis, or the process by which macrophages eat dying cells, is vital to generate and maintain tolerance at the maternal-feral interface. We're interested in finding out how this process happens in the placenta and how it goes wrong in preeclampsia and other pregnancy complications.
Neutrophil function in preeclampsia
Neutrophils have been implicated in preeclampsia, as they release increased levels of NETs (neutrophil extracellular traps) in both the blood and placenta of women with preeclampsia. We want to find out how and why this happens, and whether we can precent this occurring.
Precision-cut Placenta Slicing
We are trying to optimise this PCPS technique, to bring it to the placenta field, and use it to study how the placenta functions.