Research

Area 3

Fetal and perinatal medicine

Team leader

Strategic objectives

The principal strategic objective is to search for solutions to prenatal diseases, identifying the mechanisms involved in fetal brain and cardiac reprogramming, developing new technologies allowing an early diagnosis, and identifying potential therapeutic targets.

Other objectives of the team are the development and consolidation of the existing lines of work in different fields, such as perinatal infections, HIV and neonatal infection, fetal therapy and surgery, screening strategies and prediction of fetal and maternal pathology in large populations, preeclampsia and prematureness.

Main lines of research

  1. Neurological damage of fetal and perinatal origin. Characterization of the physiopathology and development of methods for the diagnosis and treatment of prenatal brain damage, with preferential use of fetal growth retardation as a model. The group possesses an important interdisciplinary structure for the characterization and prediction of perinatal brain damage, with special attention to the fetal reprogramming mechanisms secondary to chronic hypoxia. The line is structured into major inter-related areas: fetal and neonatal brain imaging (ultrasound, moving blood fraction and MRI- DTI-RMS), neurological damage biomarkers, and follow-up of neurological development over the long term.
  2. Cardiac function and cardiovascular programming in the fetus. The aim of this research line is to characterize cardiac function and develop methods for the prediction and treatment of fetal programming in the context of cardiac dysfunction in fetuses and infants. This includes new echocardiographic markers of fetal myocardial function, biochemical and genomic markers of ischemia and immune/endothelial hyperactivation.
  3. Fetal therapy and surgery. As members of the European Eurofoetus group, we study the fetal surgical treatment of complications of monochorial gestation and congenital diaphragmatic herniation, and the tissue engineering repair of fetal membranes. Screening of aneuploidy and maternal disease markers.
  4. Perinatal pathology. This is a mixed line that groups projects relating to prematureness (chorioamnionitis, aggressive nutrition), clinical pathology (diabetes, autoimmune diseases), preeclampsia and placental disorders (developing methods for early prediction), HIV and pregnancy, neonatal respiratory disease (study of pulmonary inflammation and prevention of bronchopulmonary dysplasia), and investigation of neonatal infection (perinatal and nosocomial infections, respiratory syncytial virus infection, etc.).