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SFB 1713:  Maternal Immune Activation: Causes and Consequences

Subject Area Medicine
Term since 2025
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 534829736
 
Healthy pregnancies are essential to a healthy society. Maternal immune adaptation sustains the maintenance of healthy pregnancies by mounting immune tolerance towards the foetus. This immune adaptation emerged from the evolution of placental mammals over thousands of years. Yet, we now live in an environment characterised by a modern lifestyle (e.g., changes in diet, obesity, psychological stress), along with a rapidly changing infectious landscape. These environmental conditions are not in sync with the evolutionary selected maternal immune adaptation during pregnancy and can threaten maternal and foetal well-being by causing maternal immune activation (MIA). Although the term MIA is increasingly used in the scientific context, it is still ill-defined. Consequently, tools allowing to detect and monitor MIA are not available. Furthermore, MIA-mediated threats to maternal and children’s health are incompletely understood. This lack of knowledge can - at least in part - be explained by the fact that pregnant women are underrepresented in concerted research approaches and clinical trials. The CRC 1713 seeks to address this knowledge gap in an interdisciplinary and interprofessional approach. In two project areas, we aim to elucidate functional principles of cellular and molecular immune adaptations mounted by the maternal-placental-foetal system. This will enable us to characterise MIA and explore the consequences of MIA for the health of pregnant women and their offspring. The foundation of our integrated approach emerges from the Clinical Research Unit 296, and was reinforced by a Junior Scientist Research Centre for Reproductive Health. To address our research aims, we will utilise established and novel preclinical models combined with available data sets and bio-samples from longitudinal human pregnancy studies and integrated data science approaches. We are solidly embedded in a highly supportive scientific environment that promotes immune and infection research and strongly focuses on translational immunology. Where specific expertise was lacking in Hamburg, we filled the gaps by selectively integrating collaborators from the universities in Lübeck, Berlin, Rostock, and Hannover. Our interdisciplinary expertise, history of collaboration, and research environment we combine to understand the causes and consequences of MIA for mothers and children is unique in Germany, if not worldwide. Therefore, we are well positioned to further consolidate pregnancy-related research and to provide the urgently needed tools to identify pregnancies and unborn children at risk. Our initiative also promotes cross-disciplinary training of early-career scientists, pivotal for advancing the next generation of experts devoted to pregnancy-related research. Our long-term aim is to translate our findings into practical applications by developing accurate monitoring tools for MIA in pregnant women. This will improve the health and well-being of both mother and child
DFG Programme Collaborative Research Centres

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Applicant Institution Universität Hamburg
 
 

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