In a time when people are making plans to travel to Mars or exploring how to live past 100, pregnancy is still dangerous for women. As a society, we must not, and cannot, be okay with any unnecessary risks.
The numbers are staggering: One in five pregnancies are impacted by complications. Hypertensive disorders, including preeclampsia—a leading cause of maternal mortality—has doubled in the past decade. What’s also shocking is four in five pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Now, more than ever, is the time to double down on advancements targeted at reversing the maternal health crisis.
Pregnancy health left behind
We’re living in the golden age of medicine. Precision medicine has transformed cancers like breast and blood cancer from being an imminent threat, often into a chronic condition to be managed. Accurate diagnostics, early screening programs, targeted therapies, and comprehensive preventive strategies are now commonplace. For example, the mortality rate has dropped across all cancers by 33% since 1991, per the American Cancer Society’s 2023 Annual Cancer Facts and Figures.
Yet, pregnancy health has been neglected and innovation has been stagnant. Shrouded in mystery, the placenta is like a “black box” that has been under researched, but it has great influence on why pregnancy journeys can be so different. Considering how much stress pregnancy puts on a woman’s body, it is surprising how little we know about the biology of pregnancy. And when a pregnant person experiences life-threatening complications, a normal pregnancy can quickly turn into a crisis.
Right now, there is no way to predict who is at risk for serious complications until symptoms manifest. Take preeclampsia—a high blood-pressure disorder in pregnancy and a leading cause of maternal and infant mortality worldwide. Though identified more than 100 years ago, even in 2024, patients and doctors depend on generalized risk factors— including pregnancy history, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, body mass index, and medical history to deduce the potential for preeclampsia. But even pregnant women with no risk factors can develop preeclampsia, and those who may be more at-risk can have uneventful pregnancies.
Today, without effective tools to predict who will develop complications, we miss the opportunity to prevent life-threatening outcomes, and many families face devastating consequences.
Biology is the crucial missing link to understanding pregnancy
As we have seen in fields like oncology, the root of breakthroughs in maternal medicine is each person’s unique, underlying biology.
The biology of pregnancy is extraordinarily complex. Most people are familiar with DNA, which stores our genetic blueprint. However, DNA testing can’t tell us about the dynamic process of our body’s development, crucial to understanding how health and disease unfold.
At Mirvie, we’re pioneering a new approach to understand the biology of pregnancy by leveraging ribonucleic acid (RNA) to predict life-threatening complications months in advance. We use a simple blood test from the mom.
With this blood test, the platform analyzes tens of thousands of RNA messages from the baby, the placenta, and the mom, using AI and machine learning. Most people are familiar with DNA, which stores our genetic blueprint. However, DNA testing can’t tell us about the dynamic process of our body’s development, crucial to understanding how health and disease unfold. RNA messages reflect biological development, thereby enabling us to decode what is going on at a given moment in pregnancy.
These RNA messages provide an unprecedented amount of information about a pregnancy, including which organ systems are forming and pregnancy timing. For the first time, we can predict which pregnancies are at the highest risk of developing complications in the months ahead.
This new level of understanding and objective data can provide expecting parents and their care teams a clear path to create the healthiest pregnancy outcome possible.
Usher in a new era for pregnancy health
Good health, wealth, and access to care are not sufficient to avoid pregnancy complications and when those things aren’t available, it is even more alarming. We cannot keep doing things the same way and we need innovation on multiple fronts to tackle this.
We must prioritize the health of pregnant women and ensure they give birth to healthy children at full term. Every family deserves the best possible beginning, and how women navigate the demanding pregnancy journey can profoundly impact lifelong health. To continue the momentum, investors, policymakers, leaders, researchers, and advocates must acknowledge that pregnancy and women’s health are at the heart of every family. They must recognize their sweeping impact on our society, healthcare systems, and economy.
We can initiate a transformative shift by supporting and investing in innovative companies that revolutionize pregnancy health and advocate for increased funding and attention to the field. Together, we all have the power to make a lasting change.
Maneesh Jain, PhD, is cofounder and CEO of Mirvie.
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