A shout out to various members of my team who have been spending way too much time recently in dark basements imaging bits of placenta with the new lightsheet microscope (with much troubleshooting) and processing the resulting datasets… but the results when it works! 🤩 @anzpra1.bsky.social

New record - got a manuscript outcome notification today for a paper I submitted in November 2023 🤯 TWENTY-ONE MONTHS to reach a first decision of minor revisions. The system is broken. 😒 #atleastitwasntrejected

Feels like it’s been a while between papers.. but pleased to say our latest is now out! Here we used the side-population technique to isolate trophoblast stem cells from term placentas, showing that in FGR they grow slower, die more easily, and have impaired differentiation. doi.org/10.1016/j.ye...

Fun day at the Rosehill College Hauora expo sharing our love of all things placenta, and our work aimed at better interpreting ultrasound in pregnancy to improve detection of at risk babies. New hologram was a hit (looks better irl), and tons of kids through 😃 #teamplacenta #pregnancymodellinggroup

Congrats to Dr Cherry Sun on officially joining the floppy hat club yesterday! 🥂🌟 Cherry’s thesis showed functional impairments in trophoblast stem cells from FGR placentae - they grow slower, die easier, & differentiate differently - which may explain placental changes seen in this disorder.

Super grateful for this generous philanthropic support of our work to develop sex-specific virtual placenta models, which we hope to use to develop more personalised tools to aid early identification of babies at risk of being born dangerously small. www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2025...

My pleasure to talk about our work on data-driven models of the feto-placental circulation at #SRI2025 in Charlotte today. Thank you to the audience for so much wonderful interaction after! 🙏

Saw the below chart, realised that individual universities in the US can get about 5x more $ from the NIH alone than our entire country has available to apply for from its two biggest funders (HRC and Marsden, together ~$200 million NZD). Cool cool.

👏👏👏 what BMJ said 👏👏👏

The list of forbidden words for scientific researchers in the United States of America in the year 2025.

Hey placenta/pregnancy people - happy to share that we've now set #ANZPRA up over here! 🥳

Beautiful review on the placental vasculature and is known of its altered function in pre-eclampsia by Hanna Allerkamp and colleagues at MedUniGraz👏 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

We can tell the truth about pregnancy without scaring women to death – in fact, it’s vital that we do | Emily Oster

Congratulations to Anandita Umapathy on her PhD graduation today! Great to have her back in NZ to celebrate together 🥳 🥂#sillyhatday @aucklanduni.bsky.social

Feels like it's been a minute.. but happy to announce the latest #JamesLab paper is now out! 🥳 Here we take a dive into trophoblast organoid models to think about the role of trophoblast stem cells in organoid formation. doi.org/10.1016/j.pl... #teamplacenta #organoids

🔥🔥👇👇

More on Marsden’s dark day: There’s detailed comments via SMC www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2024/12/04/g...

A bit slow on this, but now there is a media piece.. stoked that Alys & I got a Marsden grant recently to further explore the biomechanical relationship between the placenta & heart in utero, and how this may impact fetal heart dysfunction in very small babies. 🥳🫀 www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2024...

Just back from a great couple of days at Tūrangawaewae marae immersing ourselves in Te Ao Maori, connecting with local communities, and having such a fun mass work sleepover. So many thanks to the #IUE team and the phenomenal maanakitanga of Tainui. Mauri ora! #teamplacenta