AGI – In Lombardy more were registered 4,280 premature births (by the 37th week) in 2022 and worldwide, premature birth is the leading cause of death for children under five years of age, with approximately 900,000 neonatal deaths recorded each year. Although the causes of premature births are not yet clear, it is suspected that the environment may be among the main triggers. To respond to this phenomenon, the TinyTrend research project led by Albert Navarro Gallinad, health data scientist at the Human Technopole and member of Luisa Zuccolo’s research group, will study which environmental factors contribute to premature births in order to inform future prevention policies.
“TinyTrend” is one of two projects thanks to which Human Technopole obtained the prestigious Marie Skodowska-Curie actions postdoctoral fellowship (MSCA) from the European Commission. The other is the Prune project developed by scientist Carlos Jimènez, postdoc in researcher Magda Bienko’s team, which will study the spatial arrangement of proteins within the cell nucleus as this contributes to optimizing the functioning of the cell itself. Each of the two fellowships is worth over 172,000 euros for a duration of two years.
Thanks to an existing collaboration with Lombardy region, Albert Navarro Gallinad will have access to health data on births registered in Lombardy in the last twelve years, estimated at almost one million children. This data will be cross-referenced, through the use of AI, with others set of information inherent to the regulatory changes in risk reduction policies that have taken place over the years. For example, the project will investigate how the frequency of premature births changes following the introduction of policies for traffic reduction. This will allow us to connect the dots between the role of air pollution and the risk to pregnant women, using the policy change as a natural experiment. This innovative approach will allow further identification environmental causes linked to premature births.
TinyTrend will therefore represent a best practice for other Italian regions, generating knowledge that can also be transferred to the study of other pathologies with a strong environmental component and with still uncertain causes. The project also involves the development of a website that will include an educational space in which the results of the research will be presented, which will be available in Italian, English and Spanish, so as to be able to reach women from different contexts. The site will also join theAgenda 2030 for Sustainable Development of the United Nations and the Global Strategy for the Health of Women, Children and Adolescents developed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The “PRUNE” project by Carlos Jimènez originates from the fact that the cell nucleus is not homogeneous. Most of its components are not uniformly distributed, but take on a peculiar three-dimensional arrangement which helps to keep processes physically separate which would otherwise be incompatible and to optimize the distribution of functions. For this reason, researchers believe that proteins, the main executors of biological functions, must have a specific spatial distribution within the cell nucleus and that this significantly influences some vital processes of the cell. To test this hypothesis, Carlos Jimènez will develop a new method to identify and map the three-dimensional arrangement of all nuclear proteins in different types of cells, from stem cells to genetically modified cells, and the functions linked to them. In addition to constituting a further building block on basic knowledge of the cell, in the future this information could provide tools to identify new therapeutic targets for the treatment of certain diseases.
The director of Human Technopole Marino Zerial underlines: “These prestigious scholarships obtained by our researchers confirm the need and importance of investing in young people, also and above all in the scientific world, and confirm once again the great commitment of Human Technopole in its mission to improve people’s health and in its educational role for the next generations of scientists. The studies of Albert Navarro Gallinad and Carlos Jimènez will combine big data with artificial intelligence and three-dimensional mapping technologies of the human genome”.
Tags: Big data premature births Lombardy
