Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology

The Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology has programmes of basic, translational and clinical research addressing the determinants of pregnancy complications. Work in the Department is funded by the Women's Health theme of the Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, a Wellcome Trust Investigator award, and numerous project grants (MRC, BBSRC, Wellcome Leap and a range of research charities).

The basic research in the Department is focused on improving our mechanistic understanding of placental development and function with the longterm goal of improving pregnancy outcome.  This work exploits stem cells and other in vitro models, genetically manipulated mice and multiple “omic” methods.

Translational research in the Department focuses on the role of placental dysfunction in determining the risk of adverse pregnancy outcome. The unique resources that underpin this are the Pregnancy Outcome Prediction studies (POPS and POPS2). These two cohorts each include multiple biological samples and rich data from~4500 pregnant women.

Finally, clinical research in the Department uses analysis of diverse data sources to study determinants and predictors pregnancy outcome. A particular focus is the effect of metformin on the fetus and placenta and this requires analysis of short and long term pregnancy outcome data using record linkage.

This interdisciplinary work involves complex teams of molecular and cellular biologists, mathematicians, bioinformaticians, statisticians and clinician-scientists.