Preeclampsia

Preeclampsia is a life-threatening complication of pregnancy that usually happens after 20 weeks of gestation. It is marked by high blood pressure and organ damage, often in the liver or kidney.

It affects 5-7% of pregnancies worldwide and is a leading cause of maternal and fetal mortality with >70,000 maternal and 500,000 fetal deaths every year.

The condition historically has had very limited tools for prediction or treatment. The primary “cure” remains delivering the baby (and placenta) as soon as possible.

What We’re Doing

  • Detect it months sooner

    We fund early tests (including cell-free RNA/DNA, metabolomic, and placental extracellular vesicle assays) to flag pre-eclampsia before symptoms start, leaping beyond routine screening.

  • Build better disease models

    We fund placenta-on-a-chipplatforms and subtype-specific organoids, giving scientists rapid, scalable ways to probe mechanisms, better understand the disease, and test new drugs.

  • Treat the placenta

    We advance trials for placenta-targeted drugs that restoreblood flow and immune balance to the placenta, buying crucial weeks and reducing mortality and morbidity for mom and baby.

References

  1. World Health Organization. (2023, May 5). Pre-eclampsia (Fact sheet). https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/pre-eclampsia

  2. Rana, S., Lemoine, E., Granger, J. P., & Karumanchi, S. A. (2023). Pre-eclampsia. Nature Reviews Disease Primers, 9(1), Article 31. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41572-023-00417-6

  3. Zhang, Y., Sylvester, K. G., Jin, B., Wong, R. J., Schilling, J., Chou, C. J., … Ling, X. B. (2023). Development of a urine metabolomics biomarker-based prediction model for pre-eclampsia during early pregnancy. Metabolites, 13(6), 715. https://doi.org/10.3390/metabo13060715

  4. Adil, M., Kolarova, T. R., Doebley, A.-L., Chen, L. A., Tobey, C. L., Galipeau, P., … Shree, R. (2025). Preeclampsia risk prediction from prenatal cell-free DNA screening. Nature Medicine, 31, 1312–1318. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-03509-w

  5. Moufarrej, M. N., Vorperian, S. K., Wong, R. J., Campos, A. A., Quaintance, C. C., Sit, R. V., … Quake, S. R. (2022). Early prediction of pre-eclampsia in pregnancy with cell-free RNA. Nature, 602, 689–694. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04410-z

  6. Thadhani, R., & Karumanchi, S. A. (2025). Lipid-delivery system could treat life-threatening pregnancy complication. Nature, 637, 273–274. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-03853-w

  7. Li, Q., Sharkey, A., Sheridan, M., Magistrati, E., Arutyunyan, A., Huhn, O., … Moffett, A. (2024). Human uterine natural killer cells regulate differentiation of extravillous trophoblast early in pregnancy. Cell Stem Cell, 31(2), 181–195.e9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stem.2023.12.013