Labour Gains

A team of scientists is learning from a long-overlooked organ, the placenta.

- Sarah Giles

It typically starts with the ring of a phone, indicating a new baby is about to enter the world. For the two researchers on call, there is little time to shower or eat. Nurses and midwives are supposed to phone when the mother is admitted, but babies aren’t known for being predictable. It isn’t babies that the University of Ottawa’s Placenta Squad wants.

The two team members grab their lab clothing and homemade Placenta Research Team badges and rush to the university. They assemble their mobile lab — cooler, tools, gloves, masks, scalpels, and a specially vented bag containing a canister of liquid nitrogen — and load it into a car. The Placenta Squad has been trained in the transportation of dangerous goods. The team then navigates through the dark streets of Ottawa to the hospital. A fender-bender, a speeding ticket, or a simple wrong turn could spell disaster. But they must hurry: when a placenta has been delivered after a baby, there’s only a precious half hour to collect samples before the chance to unlock medical answers from the body’s least understood organ will be lost.

For decades, placentas, or “afterbirth,” as they were once known, were an afterthought for researchers. Scientists have long recognized that the organ is important for oxygen and waste transfer between mother and fetus. Like an airplane’s black box, the placenta may also hold the secrets of what happens to a fetus during pregnancy and why. What we know comes largely from unhealthy placentas — those that have been exposed to diabetes and hypertension, for example — from mice. Far less is known about healthy human placentas.