Penn Med launches center to study premature birth

The Perelman School of Medicine and the March of Dimes Foundation announced the launch of a new center to study premature births.

Preterm birth is the leading cause of newborn death in the United States , and the leading killer of children under age 5 worldwide, affecting nearly half a million babies each year.

The March of Dimes — an organization that funds research on premature birth, birth defects and infant mortality — will invest $10 million over the next five years to create a transdisciplinary center conducting team-based research, led by physicians and researchers at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The Prematurity Research Center will aim to discover the unknown causes of preterm birth and develop new strategies to prevent it.

The center, which was announced two weeks ago, will be part of a network of five such centers created by the March of Dimes foundation since 2011.

The Prematurity Research Center at Penn will bring together more than 40 scientists, physicians, faculty and staff. The center will be led by Deborah Driscoll, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Penn Medicine.

“Preterm birth is an important critical problem in the United States and all over the world,” said Samuel Parry, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and one of the head researchers in the center. “Among developed countries, the United States has an unacceptably high rate of preterm birth — greater than 10 percent.”

Parry said the transdisciplinary approach requested by the March of Dimes foundation is novel. “We’re not trying to develop clinical trials to try to compare different therapeutics but rather ... the idea is to engage investigators from other disciplines that previously have not studied preterm birth.”

The center will engage researchers who study physiology, nutrition, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology — as well as researchers from the School of Engineering and Wharton.

The centers will focus on the energy and metabolism of the cells in the reproductive tract, structural changes in the cervix and contribution of the placenta to normal and preterm labor.

In Pennsylvania, 10.7 percent, or more than 16,000 babies, were born prematurely in 2013. Babies who survive an early birth often face lifetime health challenges, such as vision and breathing problems, cerebral palsy and learning disabilities.

“We’re excited to add the expertise of the University of Pennsylvania’s renowned scientists to our specialized network of investigators nationwide working to discover precisely what causes early labor, and how it can be prevented,” Jennifer Howse, president of the March of Dimes, said in a press release.

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