Signe Dalsgaard Justesen
Cand. Scient in molecular medicine, PhD student (enrolled 2022)
Signejustesen@clin.au.dk
Department: Department of Clinical Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Aarhus University
Main supervisor: Lars Henning Pedersen
Research areas
- Children, youth and pregnancy
Research titel and description
Placental signals in response to pharmacological treatment – can in vitro models predict placental-fetal interaction in diabetic and obese pregnancies?
I investigate how medication in pregnancy affect placental-fetal signalling in pregnancies complicated by diabetes and maternal obesity. As it is both unethical and difficult to perform pharmacological studies directly on pregnant women, I am using term placental tissue from normal, diabetic, and obese pregnancies to set up in vitro placental cell-models. I perform dose-response experiments, with various pharmaceuticals, on the cells and investigate changes in relevant markers. Umbilical cord blood and maternal blood is assessed and correlated to findings from the cells. Hopefully, knowledge from this project will help increase the safe use of medication during pregnancy.