Dr. Ramkumar Menon, professor and director of the division of basic and translational research in obstetrics and gynecology at The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and one of two principal investigators at the new March of Dimes Texas Collaborative Prematurity Research Center, discusses his career and focus at the PRC: pregnancy-on-a-chip technology that simulates human pregnancy and will be used to validate drugs that may reverse preterm birth.

Dr. Catherine Spong, professor and chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and one of two principal investigators at the new March of Dimes Texas Collaborative Prematurity Research Center, discusses her career, research, and focus at the PRC: examining how nutrition, socioeconomic factors, the placenta, and bacterial vaginosis affect pregnancy outcomes.

Dr. Lynne Sykes, co-director of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Imperial College London, discusses her new paper detailing links between a woman’s blood type and her risk of spontaneous preterm birth depending on her gynecological and obstetrical history.

Dr. Wendy Kuohung, a 2025 March of Dimes Discovery Research Grant winner, discusses her original research to find novel therapeutics to treat preeclampsia associated with APOL1 gene variants.

March of Dimes Research Center for Advancing Maternal Health Equity investigator Dr. Sindhu Srinivas and doula Alexia Doumbouya discuss leading a randomized controlled trial (RCT) on whether doula integration throughout pregnancy, birth, and postpartum can decrease maternal depression and anxiety.

Dr. Lars Bode, the founding director of the Human Milk Institute at UC San Diego, the university’s Larsson-Rosenquist Foundation Chair of Collaborative Human Milk Research, and a professor of pediatrics at the university, discusses human milk, informally known as breast milk, and all its healing properties—that are not only crucial for mothers and babies, but may benefit people of all ages.

Prof. Dennis Lo, the winner of the 2025 March of Dimes Richard B. Johnston, Jr., MD Prize and the inventor of non-invasive prenatal testing, or NIPT, discusses the road to the discovery, the power of cell free DNA to detect cancer, and one of the places in the world he still hasn't been.

Dr. Tony Capra and Dr. Marina Sirota, scientists from the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center (PRC) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), discuss their foundational finding that spontaneous, or unplanned, preterm birth is fundamentally different from indicated preterm birth.

Dr. Diana Bianchi, a former March of Dimes Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award winner, discusses the ability of prenatal testing to detect maternal cancer, her discovery of microchimerism, a potential prenatal therapeutic for Down syndrome, and whether the subjects in Vermeer's paintings were pregnant. This episode was recorded March 4, 2025. As of the episode air date in May 2025, Dr. Bianchi no longer held the position of director of the National Institute of Child Health and Huma...

Leading micronutrient expert Dr. Kimberly O’Brien, a Professor of Human Nutrition at Cornell University and the 2025 recipient of the March of Dimes Agnes Higgins Award in Maternal-Fetal Nutrition, discusses what we know—and don't know—about iron requirements, metabolism, and use in pregnancy.

Dr. Phillip Bennett, a co-director of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Imperial College London, discusses a historic randomized controlled trial (RCT) that will test a vaginal probiotic's ability to reduce preterm birth risk.

Dr. Jamie Lo, an Associate Professor at Oregon Health & Science University, and Dr. Adam Crosland, an Assistant Professor at Oregon Health & Science University, discuss the risks of substance use, particularly cannabis, in pregnancy.

Winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Dr. Victor Ambros and Dr. Gary Ruvkun give a rare, extended joint interview about the road that led them to their discovery of miRNA in a roundworm, Dr. Ruvkun’s later discovery of miRNA in humans, how the scientists were both inspired at a young age by astronomy, what Dr. Ambros’ late father might have said about his son’s Nobel win, and a decades-old story from Dr. Ruvkun about a trip to Bolivia.

March of Dimes Chief Scientific Advisor Dr. Emre Seli and March of Dimes Senior Director of Research Operations Jonathan Cherry look back on MODCAST since its launch, and look forward to episodes in 2025.

Dr. Sam Mesiano, an investigator at the March of Dimes Ohio Collaborative Prematurity Research Center, discusses the enzyme that leads to progesterone withdrawal and labor in cases of infection-related preterm birth - and how this enzyme discovery can be used to revive progesterone therapy to delay or stop preterm birth.

Dr. Alexiane Decout, an assistant professor in immunology at the University of Warwick, and Dr. David MacIntyre, one of the directors of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Imperial College London, discuss the biological advantage of Lactobacillus Crispatus, the most in-demand of all vaginal microbiome bacteria, which is protective against preterm birth. Read the preprint here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.13.612838v1.full

March of Dimes Senior Director of Research Operations Jonathan Cherry on March of Dimes research grants and awards.

Dr. Nima Aghaeepour, an investigator at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Stanford, and Dr. Sarah England, the director of the Center for Reproductive Health Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine, discuss a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) model that found that sleepers and movers have a 52% reduced risk of delivering early while those sleeping and moving less have a 44% increased risk of delivering early.

The 2024 winners of the March of Dimes Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Research Awards, Dr. Elizabeth Enninga and Dr. Mara Murray Horwitz, discuss their areas of study. Dr. Enninga, an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Immunology, at Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic, explains how cell free (cf) fetal DNA triggers labor and preterm birth, and how understanding more about this process can help prevent early labor and more effectively induce labor. Dr. Murray Horwitz, a primary care ...

Dr. Alan Flake, the Director of the Center for Fetal Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and 2021 March of Dimes Prize recipient, discusses the most impactful pursuits of his career: fetal surgery, the artificial womb, and in utero stem cell therapy.