Abstract

Placental Extracellular Vesicles; Regulators of Maternal Physiology

Larry Chamley, Professor and Head of Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Auckland

The human placenta produces vast quantities of extracellular vesicles into the maternal blood continuously during pregnancy. Biodistribution studies indicate that the majority of these EVs are taken up from the maternal blood rapidly in the lungs, liver kidneys and spleen. Functional studies demonstrate that normotensive placental EVs can protect against the development of hypertension long-term while EVs from pregnancies complicated by preeclampsia a hypertensive disease of pregnancy activate the maternal endothelium and induce a pro-constrictive phenotype in resistance arteries.  These functional studies suggest that the protein and/or regulatory RNA cargos of placental EVs have a long-lasting regulatory effect on  the maternal cardiovascular system.