Predicting preeclampsia
Mirvie has created a platform that predicts preeclampsia months in advance.
Preeclampsia predictor
By Michele Meyer June 1, 2024
Share This Page
Or copy link
Predicting preeclampsia
ONE IN FIVE PREGNANCIES SUFFER COMPLICATIONS, in part because hypertensive disorders have doubled since 2007. Those statistics hit home when the daughter of Stanford University bioengineer and physicist Stephen Quake, PhD, was born prematurely.
His wife had suffered from preeclampsia, which can cause women to have strokes or organ damage and is a leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths in the United States.
Preeclampsia’s onset can be sudden, forcing OB/GYNS to deliver babies prematurely to save the lives of the baby and mother.
“Almost 33 of 100,000 women die in pregnancy, delivery or postpartum. Preeclampsia is a leading cause of maternal mortality,” says Alison Cowan, M.D., former head of medical affairs at Mirvie, a San Francisco biotech company focused on predicting pregnancy complications.
In response, Mirvie has developed a blood test that can help with predicting preeclampsia.
Cowan had suffered from preeclampsia while pregnant with her daughter four years ago. “You have a different perspective when you experience it yourself,” she says. “For us, saving lives is our mission.”
“Mirvie will enable us to prepare the mother to prevent adverse outcomes,” says Christopher Robinson, M.D., a maternal-fetal medicine specialist and OB/GYN at East Cooper Medical Center in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. “It’s not only about saving lives of mothers and babies, but also children’s quality of life by preventing preterm births, which can slow down their development. Eyesight, breathing and day-to-day function can be impacted.”
Currently, there’s been no reliable way to predict preeclampsia before symptoms occur. Physicians of pregnant patients rely on generalized risk factors such as a woman’s medical history, race, weight and socioeconomic status, Cowan says. Enter Mirvie.
What the blood test does
Quake and Maneesh Jain, PhD, a fellow physicist and biotech veteran, have worked at Quake’s lab at Stanford to develop a noninvasive blood test that could predict and prevent preeclampsia and preterm births.
Research has pointed to early success of the resulting blood test. A study in Nature found the Mirvie RNA platform effectively identified 75 percent of at-risk pregnancies months before women developed preeclampsia. The test also can predict 76 percent of early preterm births, as reported in the July 2022 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
It works by drilling down to RNA, the unique molecular fingerprint of each fetus, Robinson says.
Unlike DNA, which stores genetic blueprints, RNA reveals biological development, including during pregnancy, Cowan says. It also can foretell preeclampsia.
Mirvie analyzes tens of thousands of RNA messages from the baby, placenta and mother to provide an RNA signature in the second trimester, long before complications tend to become crises.
Mirvie’s blood draw poses no risk to mother or baby. Physicians need only a single blood sample from the mother about halfway through pregnancy, before preeclampsia usually occurs.
“It’s super exciting,” says Robinson. “We’ve known about preeclampsia for over 100 years but have had no mechanism to prevent it or prolong a pregnancy. This gives us hope we can intervene and improve outcomes.”
Cowan emphasizes that “pregnancy health matters across a lifespan. Women who develop preeclampsia have two to four times greater risk of future cardiovascular risk. By preventing preeclampsia, we can help avoid future cardiovascular disease.”
Mirvie’s platform of care
Mirvie’s patient-centered approach involves physicians and patients.
Pregnant women are urged to monitor their blood pressure and weight — while physicians can take preventive measures earlier on, such as prescribing low-dose aspirin from the twelfth week onward.
Women also are encouraged to use a blood pressure cuff to check for hypertension at home every two weeks in the first 20 weeks and then weekly until delivery, Cowan says.
“Patients learn to note and report to their OB/GYN any signs of preeclampsia,” she says. These include persistent headaches, shortness of breath, sudden weigh tgain (five or more pounds in a week), face or hand swelling, and nausea and vomiting in the second half of their pregnancy.
Women are taught tools of a healthy lifestyle. These include a half hour to an hour of physical activity three to four times weekly and adopting a Mediterranean diet rich in vegetables, fruit, fish and legumes—but little red meat.
THE TEST’S FUTURE
Mirvie’s test is in the pre-commercial phase, and it’s not yet on the market. More research is needed to examine how the test might detect other conditions and to further validate its preeclampsia results on a larger scale.
“The sky is the limit in how this technology can grow and evolve,” Cowan says. “It has the potential to have a major impact across the spectrum of pregnancy complications, from preterm to fetal growth restriction and beyond. If we can better predict these pregnancy complications, we can better develop the tools to prevent them in the future.” •