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National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

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Your Environment. Your Health.

Final Progress Reports: Northeastern University: Toxicant-Stimulated Disruption of Gestational Tissues with Implications for Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes

Superfund Research Program

Toxicant-Stimulated Disruption of Gestational Tissues with Implications for Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes

Project Leader: Sean Harris (University of Michigan)
Co-Investigators: Kelly M. Bakulski (University of Michigan), April Z. Gu (Cornell University), Chuanwu Xi (University of Michigan)
Grant Number: P42ES017198
Funding Period: 2010-2025
View this project in the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT)

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Final Progress Reports

Year:   2019  2013 

Trichloroethylene (TCE) is a common environmental contaminant in thousands of hazardous waste sites. Rita Loch-Caruso, Ph.D., and her laboratory seek toxicological explanations for epidemiology findings that TCE exposure is associated with impaired fetal growth in humans. Their recent work focuses on the placenta because of the critical role the placenta plays in a healthy pregnancy and long-term health of the fetus and mother. Because TCE is transformed in the body to more toxic molecules (metabolites), researchers exposed placental cells grown in the laboratory to a toxic metabolite of TCE. They found that exposure to the toxic TCE metabolite causes adaptive changes to metabolism pathways in order to maintain adequate levels of cellular energy (Elkin et al., 2020). Consistent with cellular energy metabolism disruptions, the team observed dysfunction of the cell structure important for cellular energy metabolism, the mitochondrion (Elkin et al., 2019). These disruptions could have significant implications for pregnancy because of the high cellular energy needs of placental cells to maintain proper placental function.

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