MODCAST

Dr. Diana Bianchi, a former March of Dimes Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Research Award winner, discusses the ability of prenatal testing to detect maternal cancer, her discovery of microchimerism, a potential prenatal therapeutic for Down syndrome, and whether the subjects in Vermeer's paintings were pregnant. This episode was recorded March 4, 2025. As of the episode air date in May 2025, Dr. Bianchi no longer held the position of director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

Leading micronutrient expert Dr. Kimberly O'Brien, a Professor of Human Nutrition at Cornell University and the 2025 recipient of the March of Dimes Agnes Higgins Award in Maternal-Fetal Nutrition, discusses what we know—and don't know—about iron requirements, metabolism, and use in pregnancy.

Dr. Phillip Bennett, a co-director of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Imperial College London, discusses a historic randomized controlled trial (RCT) that will test a vaginal probiotic's ability to reduce preterm birth risk.

Dr. Jamie Lo, an Associate Professor at Oregon Health & Science University, and Dr. Adam Crosland, an Assistant Professor at Oregon Health & Science University, discuss the risks of substance use, particularly cannabis, in pregnancy.

Winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Dr. Victor Ambros and Dr. Gary Ruvkun give a rare, extended joint interview about the road that led them to their discovery of miRNA in a roundworm, Dr. Ruvkun's later discovery of miRNA in humans, how the scientists were both inspired at a young age by astronomy, what Dr. Ambros' late father might have said about his son's Nobel win, and a decades-old story from Dr. Ruvkun about a trip to Bolivia.

March of Dimes Chief Scientific Advisor Dr. Emre Seli and March of Dimes Senior Director of Research Operations Jonathan Cherry look back on MODCAST since its launch, and look forward to episodes in 2025.

Dr. Sam Mesiano, an investigator at the March of Dimes Ohio Collaborative Prematurity Research Center, discusses the enzyme that leads to progesterone withdrawal and labor in cases of infection-related preterm birth - and how this enzyme discovery can be used to revive progesterone therapy to delay or stop preterm birth.

Dr. Alexiane Decout, an assistant professor in immunology at the University of Warwick, and Dr. David MacIntyre, one of the directors of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Imperial College London, discuss the biological advantage of Lactobacillus Crispatus, the most in-demand of all vaginal microbiome bacteria, which is protective against preterm birth. Read the preprint here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.13.612838v1.full

March of Dimes Senior Director of Research Operations Jonathan Cherry on March of Dimes research grants and awards.

Dr. Nima Aghaeepour, an investigator at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Stanford, and Dr. Sarah England, the director of the Center for Reproductive Health Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine, discuss a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) model that found that sleepers and movers have a 52% reduced risk of delivering early while those sleeping and moving less have a 44% increased risk of delivering early. 

The 2024 winners of the March of Dimes Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Research Awards, Dr. Elizabeth Enninga and Dr. Mara Murray Horwitz, discuss their areas of study. Dr. Enninga, an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Immunology, at Minnesota's Mayo Clinic, explains how cell free (cf) fetal DNA triggers labor and preterm birth, and how understanding more about this process can help prevent early labor and more effectively induce labor. Dr. Murray Horwitz, a primary care doctor at Boston Medical Center and an assistant professor of medicine at Boston University, discusses barriers women with a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy (HDP), like preeclampsia, face in achieving cardiac and overall health after childbirth, and delves into an intervention called patient navigation that can lessen those barriers.

Dr. Alan Flake, the Director of the Center for Fetal Research at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and 2021 March of Dimes Prize recipient, discusses the most impactful pursuits of his career: fetal surgery, the artificial womb, and in utero stem cell therapy.

Dr. Brice Gaudillière, an investigator at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Stanford University, discusses a breakthrough Machine Learning (ML) algorithm that makes reliable predictions about labor onset, preterm birth, and preeclampsia and also identifies the biological markers supporting those predictions. 

Dr. Marisa Bartolomei, a University of Pennsylvania professor of cell and developmental biology, co-director of the university's Epigenetics Institute, and winner of the 2024 March of Dimes Richard B. Johnston, Jr., MD Prize, on discovering one of the first imprinted genes, making connections between imprinted gene mutations and developmental disorders, and uncovering the exact pathways of gene imprinting defects: namely, abnormalities in DNA methylation.

Former Stanford PRC collaborator Dr. Jonas Miller, now a Psychological Sciences Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut, discusses how the stress a woman experiences before pregnancy is associated with the way her child's brain functions around three to five years old. Those children, Dr. Miller found, have a harder time with impulse control.

Dr. Tim Hand, a March of Dimes researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, discusses the link between breast milk and a life-threatening preterm birth-related condition called necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). As it turns out, not all breast milk is protective against NEC.

Dr. Elizabeth Cherot, the 6th and current President and CEO of March of Dimes, and the first medical doctor to lead the organization since its founding in 1938, discusses the March of Dimes Innovation Fund.

Dr. Lynne Sykes, a co-director of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Imperial College London, discusses the immune cascade that triggers vaginal microbiome-driven preterm birth and a new vaginal supplement that could change the makeup of the vaginal microbiome to prevent this type of immune response.

Philadelphia neonatologists Dr. Jay Greenspan and Dr. Liz Foglia discuss three talks at the upcoming Hot Topics in Neonatology conference in Maryland: one on the lower limits of viability and the other two on racism in the NICU.

Dr. Nima Aghaeepour, a researcher at March of Dimes' Prematurity Research Center at Stanford, discusses a Machine Learning (ML) model that predicts prematurity-related newborn diseases weeks before they occur, including before a baby is even born. 

Prof. MacIntyre, one of the directors of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Imperial College London, discusses his team's new device that can, in under two minutes, identify the type of bacteria in a woman's vaginal microbiome and determine whether it's causing inflammation, and could lead to preterm birth. 

Stanford University Science Fellow Dr. Mira Moufarrej on what we know about preeclampsia, why Black women in the U.S. are disproportionately impacted and a new blood test that could identify at-risk women in the first trimester. 

Dr. Marina Sirota, principal investigator at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at the University of California San Francisco, and colleagues Dr. Tomiko Oskotsky and Dr. Jonathan Golob discuss using big data to launch a DREAM Challenge that succeeded in creating two predictive models for preterm birth risk.

March of Dimes Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Emre Seli discusses the motivations behind the podcast, the research vision at March of Dimes, our belief in open, collaborative science, and our focus on translational research that makes a difference for moms and babies.