https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.89.41

I undertook my PhD in maternal, foetal and placenta physiology in the Placental Research Laboratory at the University of Southampton, under the supervision of Rohan Lewis, Mark Hanson and Jane Cleal. The placental laboratory is based at the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) centre in the Faculty of Medicine. The centre was set up following David Barker’s proposal stating that the risk of developing some chronic diseases in adulthood is influenced not only by genetic and lifestyle factors, but also by environmental factors acting in foetal and infant life.

Today the centre boasts a broad collaboration of interdisciplinary research from the Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, the National Institute for Health Research Nutrition Biomedical Research Centre, and the Institute of Developmental Sciences (IDS). The collective work of these groups aims to understand early-life events that predispose individuals to chronic diseases (diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and some forms of cancer) and to develop interventions to reduce the burden of these diseases, in both developed and developing countries. The IDS is made up of small laboratory groups with various research themes including epigenetics, cardiovascular research and placental research.

The placenta group seeks to understand how various placental functional pathways work together as a system to support foetal growth, and how this determines pregnancy outcomes. This group uses isolated placental perfusions and placental fragment studies, together with a range of molecular and biochemical techniques to decipher important mechanisms involved in amino acid transport across the human placenta.

However, as in many organs, the crucial role of inter-organ metabolism has yet to be understood and incorporated into the proposed model of amino acid transport in order to understand factors contributing to net amino acid transfer to the fetus. My studies – which were carried out in collaboration with John Jackson and Alan Jackson – explored placental amino acid metabolism and its role in determining net transfer and also the partitioning of nutrients between the mother, the placenta and the fetus. Due to the complexity of the placental nutrient transfer model emerging, the group is also now collaborating with mathematicians and the Centre for Biomedical Research Mass Spectrometry Unit (University of Southampton) as well as staff at the Maternal and Foetal Health Research Group (University of Manchester) to model placental amino acid and fatty acid transport across the placenta.

As placental function is influenced by both the maternal and the foetal environment, the group is also carrying out research work in conjunction with the Southampton Women’s Survey (SWS). The SWS was set up in 1998 to study how diet and lifestyle factors before and during pregnancy influence the health of women and their children. Data from the placenta group, which was generated during my PhD, have contributed to this work by suggesting that maternal body composition, pre-pregnancy smoking and exercise influence placental function, and also mRNA expression.
When the placenta laboratory was opened in 2005, it had three researchers, with Dr Rohan Lewis as the principal investigator, Dr Jane Cleal as a Postdoctoral researcher and Dr Ellen Burnett as Research Assistant. I joined the group in 2007 as a PhD student (sponsored by the Gerald Kerkut Charitable Fund). Today both Jane Cleal and Rohan Lewis are principal investigators; the laboratory has three new PhD students and a new Postdoctoral Research Fellow. The group is also extending its work into understanding the role of vitamin D in controlling placental amino acid transporters and whether epigenetic mechanisms are involved in placental amino acid transporter regulation. Currently, the research activities by the placental group are being funded by the BBSRC and the Gerald Kerkut Charitable Fund, and also in collaboration with an EU funded project.

While I am glad to have finished my PhD and graduated, I feel sad to leave the group and will miss all the fun we had singing to the placenta, “Loving you is easy ‘cause you’re beautiful”!