Dr. Surendra Sharma is principal investigator for the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence that will be established at Women & Infants Hospital, a Care New England facility, thanks to a $12.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Sharma, a research scientist and professor in the department of pediatrics at Women & Infants Hospital and the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, talked with Providence Business News recently about the new grant, which is designed to support a multidisciplinary, translational and innovative program to evaluate how pregnancy complications medically impact both pregnant women and their children.
PBN: What is the focus of the COBRE grant, and which physicians and/or researchers will play prominent roles on grant research?
SHARMA: The programmatic and scientific goals of this COBRE for Reproductive Health are to develop research infrastructure for a center that supports a multidisciplinary, translational and innovative program in women’s reproductive health. I am the principal investigator and director and the deputy director is Dr. Maureen Phipps. Target investigators are Dr. Lynae Brayboy, Dr. Shibin Cheng, Dr. Beatrice Lechner and Jessica Schuster. Core directors are Dr. Dwight Rouse and Dr. Jennifer Friedman, and mentors are Dr. James Padbury, Gary Wessel and Justin Fallon.
Brayboy, a reproductive endocrinologist at Women & Infants Hospital and an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Warren Alpert Medical School, proposes a new study on the prediction of preeclampsia and gestational diabetes among in vitro fertilization patients. Cheng, a research scientist at Women & Infants and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Warren Alpert Medical School, will continue studying preeclampsia, with a focus on whether preeclampsia may be a prelude to Alzheimer’s disease.
Lechner, a neonatologist at Women & Infants and assistant professor of pediatrics at the Warren Alpert Medical School, will continue studying complications causing preterm birth. Her cutting-edge research examines why preterm births are associated with a high rate of mortality in mothers, suggesting its long-term impact. Schuster, an instructor of pediatrics and a computational biologist at Women & Infants studies women diagnosed with severe preeclampsia and uses contemporary mathematical and computer science approaches to find answers to scientific questions related to preeclampsia.
PBN: How will Women & Infants use the $12.2 million to achieve its goals – additional personnel, research facilities, etc.?
SHARMA: This funding will help us to sustain the required core facilities and key personnel. Importantly, it will help us to recruit additional personnel for the core facilities and research projects.
PBN: What research outcomes do you hope to achieve?
SHARMA: The overarching research goals of this COBRE for Reproductive Health include the use of well-defined, preclinical models to understand mechanisms mediating adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preeclampsia, gestational diabetes and prematurity; identification of functional predictive biomarkers and treatment options and application of contemporary computational approaches to enhance our understanding of the networks and pathways underlying these potentially devastating pregnancy complications.
PBN: How will you and your colleagues recruit patients to participate in COBRE studies? Will they be recruited exclusively from Care New England facilities?
SHARMA: Dr. Dwight Rouse, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist and professor of obstetrics and gynecology, is director of the Clinical and Translational Core facility. He will direct all the activities associated with patient recruitment at Women & Infants Hospital. Of course, research samples will also be obtained through national and international collaborators.
PBN: With the proposed merger between Partners HealthCare and Care New England, do you anticipate engaging researchers and/or physicians from Partners to participate in this research?
SHARMA: Productive collaborations are the backbone of successful research endeavors. Future collaborations with colleagues from Partners HealthCare or any other entity depend on our needs going forward.
Nancy Kirsch is a PBN contributing writer.
