Coordination of the prospective pregnancy cohort PRINCE (Prenatal Identification of Children’s Health)

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Anke Diemert; Professor Dr. Boris Fehse; Professor Dr. Kurt Hecher; Professorin Dr. Ania Carolina Muntau; Professor Dr. Dominique Singer; Professor Dr. Philippe Stock; Professorin Dr. Eva Tolosa; Professorin Dr. Antonia Zapf, since 10/2022
• Subject Area: Gynaecology and Obstetrics
• Term: from 2015 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 255154572

Children’s health is critically dependent of the prenatal well-being of the mother, and a number of observational studies have identified an impaired immunity in children upon prenatal challenges, such as stress perception, medication, nutrition or infection. However, concerted and in-depth studies assessing how such prenatal challenges may alter foetal development and subsequently children’s health in humans are largely lacking. In the present project, we address this limitation by recruiting healthy, but also diseased pregnant women into a cohort study, followed up by the assessment of children’s health and immunity at birth and during the first five years of life. This study has been named PRINCE (Prenatal Identification of Children’s Health). Prenatal challenges and postnatal confounders are thoroughly documented, along with the collection of biological samples. This unique cohort now allows for testing the impact of prenatal challenges on children’s health, and provides the basis for translating the findings arising from the functional and reductionist approaches using mouse models in the research projects of the KFO296. It further allows to compare immune responses during pregnancy in healthy and diseased women, e.g. in the context of maternal autoimmunity (multiple sclerosis) or infection (HIV, CMV). The acquisition and handling of participant data and biological samples at high quality standards is a fundamental responsibility pursued by this service project. Therefore, standardized operating procedures for sample collection have been implemented, and questionnaires have been developed to standardize prenatal data collection (ultrasound; documentation of medication, stress, infection, stress, lifestyle, nutrition), as well as at birth and early in life of the children. Tissue banking, data management, and epidemiological and statistical support is also provided by this project, along with acquisition and analysis of immune cell subsets in samples from mother and child by flow cytometry following advanced state of the art approaches. Taken together, this project truly bridges basic science and clinical research via the synergies arising from the combined excellent expertise in Obstetrics, Neonatology and Paediatrics on the one hand, and in Immunology, Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Systems Biology on the other. This allows the efficient translation of hypothesis and findings arising from the research projects in this KFO. Moreover, it provides the platform for assessing foeto-maternal health and diseases in an unsupervised, systems biology approach.

• DFG Programme: Clinical Research Units
• Subproject of: KFO 296: Feto-maternal immune cross talk: Consequences for maternal and offspring's health
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Heiko Becher, until 9/2022