Your research focuses heavily on the pre-term immune system. What are some key discoveries you've made recently?
We are very excited with the help of the NOuRISH team to put together a longitudinal cohort of preterm infants to study how their circulating immunity develops. One of the limiting factors to study this vulnerable population has been their incredibly small blood volume. To address this, we have been able to optimize performing multi-omics analysis including CyTOF, single cells RNAseq and proteomics all from just two drops of blood. We are currently putting together a manuscript where we show how dynamic the immune cells in the peripheral blood of premature infants are. We also show that there are unique signatures in the blood of previous exposures to chorioamnionitis that persist long-term in these infants.
What was your role in the study?
I am the overall PI of the study and Dr. Bunmi Olaloye and Weihong Gu, a postdoc in our group, have been leading the analysis and are putting together the manuscript.
What is the most innovative aspect of your research?
Optimization of blood volumes to perform multi-omics studies.
Why is this research important during Prematurity Awareness Month?
We are really tackling long unanswered questions about the immune system of preterm infants how it is different from those born full-term, and how we could alter it for healthier responses.
What is your favorite aspect of your research?
For me, it's working with the amazing team of trainees in our group. They inspire me every day.
What comes next? More studies, clinical changes, policy?
We are looking forward to conducting more studies in full-term infants to really understand how the immune system of preterm infants is different with the hope of finding interventions to restore the healthy trajectories in preemies closer to those of healthy full-term neonates.
Anything else you'd like readers to know?
In the future, we hope that by studying the blood of infants, we will be able to predict which infants are at higher risk of complications, which infants will respond better to vaccines and infections.