Pregnancy & Prematurity

This Theme targets miscarriage, stillbirth, preterm birth (PTB), and prematurity and is justified by patient needs, stakeholders, government and industry priorities. The conditions represent pregnancy loss continuums disproportionately affecting underserved communities, contributing to trans-generational health disparities and long-term morbidities. Mothers have increased risks of subsequent PTB, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Preterm babies have 1.5-8.0 higher odds of impaired neurodevelopment, chronic diseases, and reduced lifespan. National audits show slow UK progress in improving mother-baby outcomes; Pregnancy-litigation costs account for 11% of claims but 59% of costs (~£7.5bn), exceeding research spend 50-fold.

Pregnancy & Prematurity Theme will bring precision medicine to mothers-babies through a convergence-science approach combining cohort deep-phenotyping, experimental medicine studies, development of novel therapeutics, data-science (artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)), cost-effective, state-of-the-art, real-world-data-enabled randomised controlled trials (RCT), and large- scale, population-based data with strong PPIE.