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Grant valued at almost $1 million awarded for research into fetus and placenta health


September 17, 2014

Dr. Jay Baltz has been awarded a five-year grant valued at $936,703 by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to study how the care and handling of a woman`s eggs prior to them being fertilized and placed in a uterus can impact the health of the fetus, placenta and offspring. The treatment of human infertility by assisted reproduction technologies (ART). There is increasing evidence that the way eggs and very early embryos are handled during ART can cause health problems in the fetus, placenta, and child. Dr. Baltz and his team will investigate a set of biochemical pathways they have studied previously and found to be instrumental in determining which genes are active. Dr. Baltz hopes to show that creating the conditions in which these pathways can function normally in eggs and very early embryos will prevent some of the problems that arise in fetuses and placentas during pregnancy, and in babies. Grant summaries are available through CIHR’s Funded Research Database.

About the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) is the research arm of The Ottawa Hospital and is an affiliated institute of the University of Ottawa, closely associated with the university’s Faculties of Medicine and Health Sciences. OHRI includes more than 1,700 scientists, clinical investigators, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff conducting research to improve the understanding, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human disease.

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