The Burroughs Wellcome Fund in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, has announced grants totaling $3 million in support of research on the biological complexities of preterm birth.

Grants of $600,000 over four years were awarded to five teams researching the causes of preterm birth ( i.e., before thirty-seven weeks), which occurs in nearly 13 percent of all U.S. births, with even higher rates among African-American and Latino/a babies. With the ultimate goal of developing preventive strategies, BWF's Preterm Birth Initiative will support projects led by John Anthony Capra of Vanderbilt University, who is working to elucidate the genetic architecture of preterm birth; Jonghwan Kim of the University of Texas at Austin, who hopes to identify genetic factors controlling normal and abnormal placental development; Tippi C. MacKenzie of the University of California, San Francisco, who will explore dysbiosis and immune activation in preterm birth; Kimani C. Toussaint of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who will  investigate the mechanobiology of cervical remodeling using a novel combination of optical microscopy and nanoindentation; and Ge Zhang of the University of Cincinnati, who will pursue a genomic study of gestational length and preterm birth.

According to the fund, many preterm births lead to long-term health problems and developmental difficulties as well as sociological issues for families. While advances have been made in the identification of dietary interventions, non-invasive monitoring of gene expression, the impact of the microbiome, and the understanding of how maternal genetics determine genetic outcomes, more needs to be done, including achieving a better understanding of parturition, the role of progesterone, and new therapeutic approaches.

"With so many questions still to be answered there are relatively few people that work in this area," said BWF president John Burris. "We hope to help develop a critical mass of researchers from all disciplines to continue to move this area forward."