Mirvie, a San Francisco-based biotech company, has announced a $4.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to launch studies to detect preeclampsia among pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa.

Preeclampsia—a condition involving persistently high blood pressure during pregnancy or the postpartum period that can lead to serious and potentially fatal complications if untreated—disproportionately affects mothers and infants in low- and middle-income countries. The condition affects 10 million women globally and is a leading cause of maternal death. The study will test for preeclampsia among pregnant women in Cameroon, Ghana, and Zambia using a simple, non-invasive blood test using Mirvie’s RNA platform. A study published in Nature in 2022 found that Mirvie’s testing method detected 75 percent of those who would develop preeclampsia.

“Diversity and inclusion in maternal health research, especially at a global scale, is critical if we want to create meaningful progress and interventions to curb maternal mortality,” said study co-lead Alan Tita, director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Mary Heersink Institute of Global Health.

“I hope that this research will underscore how state-of-the-art innovation in pregnancy health can contribute to the global good and unleash personalized medicine for maternal health in a way we have yet to see,” said study co-lead Methodius Tuuli, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Medicine at Brown University and chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Women & Infants Hospital.

(Photo credit: Getty Images/Kate Sept 2004)