I am working researching the immune response that occurs during pregnancy in order to better understand miscarriage, and in future hopes to have the ability to prevent it. We implant scaffolds into mice in order to remove them and monitor the immune cells along with other cells within the scaffold. We do this to see what is going on in the mouse during pregnancy. We also examine the uterus of a pregnant mouse in order to calculate the resorption rate to decipher just how healthy the pregnancy was. This research will be beneficial to any woman or person who is going through pregnancy and has the potential to miscarry their child. Miscarriage can be a very traumatic and life changing even that people often have to go through. About 26% of all pregnancies end up in miscarriages which is a much higher percentage than we would like to see. The chances of miscarriage also increase if you have already had one or multiple. If you have 3+ miscarriages your chances rise to 74%. I am very involved in the research by doing both animal work and cell work. The animal work is something that could be discussed in terms of research ethics. Working with animals can be very contradictory but we need them in order to better understand what is going on. We treat the animals the best that you can. We daily monitor them to make sure they are doing well and when performing surgeries we are careful with them and we also give them pain medication.
