The human placenta is required to be the anchor, the conduit and the controller during pregnancy. The survival of the baby and its associated placenta is dependent upon the placenta shielding the embryo/fetus from harm, e.g., autoimmune disease - thrombophilia, antiphospholipid syndrome or infections, while simultaneously providing for the passage of critical nutrients (e.g., amino acids, vitam...

Uterine natural killer (uNK) cells, a specific type of (NK) are important cells at the foeto-maternal interface in humans as well mice. uNK part innate lymphoid group 1. Especially mouse, but also rat, many vivo studies have been performed to evaluate role placental development. These shown that not indispensable pregnancy, they play an optimal decidual angiogenesis early trophoblast invasion a...

We describe the distribution of indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 1 (IDO1) in vascular endothelium of human first-trimester and term placenta. Expression of IDO1 protein on the fetal side of the interface extended from almost exclusively sub-trophoblastic capillaries in first-trimester placenta to a nearly general presence on villous vascular endothelia at term, including also most bigger vessels suc...

Perivascular multipotent mesenchymal progenitors exist in a variety of tissues, including the placenta. Here, we suggest that the abundant vasculature present in the human placenta can serve as a source of myogenic cells to regenerate skeletal muscle. Chorionic villi dissected from the mid-gestation human placenta were first transplanted intact into the gastrocnemius muscles of SCID/mdx mice, w...

Placenta expresses various lipase activities. However, a detailed characterization of the involved genes and proteins is lacking. In this study, we compared the expression of endothelial lipase (EL) and LPL in human term placenta. When placental protein extracts were separated by heparin-Sepharose affinity chromatography, the EL protein eluted as a single peak without detectable phospholipid or...

BACKGROUND/AIM Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) have been utilised in many clinical trials as an experimental treatment in numerous clinical settings. Bone marrow remains the traditional source tissue for MSCs but is relatively hard to access in large volumes. Alternatively, MSCs may be derived from other tissues including the placenta and adipose tissue. In an initial study no obvious differen...

Over the last 20-80 million years the mammalian placenta has taken on a variety of morphologies through both divergent and convergent evolution. Recently we have shown that the human placenta genome has a unique epigenetic pattern of large partially methylated domains (PMDs) and highly methylated domains (HMDs) with gene body DNA methylation positively correlating with level of gene expression....

Human exposure to parabens as a preservative used in personal care products is of increasing concern, as there is evidence from in vivo and in vitro studies of hormone disruption in association with exposure to parabens. Transport across the placenta could be critical for risk assessment, but the available data are sparse. The aim is to develop a method for estimating fetal exposure, via the pl...

The aim of this study was to investigate the actions of two isomers of DDT (p,p'-DDT, o,p'-DDT) and DDE (p,p'-DDE, o,p'-DDE) on the human placenta. We studied the effects of DDT and its metabolite DDE on CYP1A1 activity and on CYP1A1 and aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) protein expression in placental cells. We used explants from third-trimester human placental tissue and JEG-3 cells, which are ...