The March of Dimes launched a research center June 23 at the University of California-San Francisco that will focus on data-sharing, computational drug discovery and EHR research to reduce premature births.
"Solving the challenges of preterm birth is a difficult goal, and accomplishing that goal will require the medical community to reframe their processes," said Emre Seli, MD, chief scientific officer for the March of Dimes and OB-GYN professor at Yale School of Medicine, in a March of Dimes news release. "The traditional medical research approach will not be enough."
The March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center will collect and make molecular data publicly available, apply computational drug repurposing to match medications to pregnant women at risk of delivering early, and use machine learning to analyze the University of California health system's EHR for links between premature births and other maternal clinical factors.
Other U.S. March of Dimes preterm birth research centers are located at the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, a University of Chicago/Northwestern University/Duke University partnership, and the Ohio Collaborative (Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Case Western Reserve and Vanderbilt University).