Maternal-Fetal Medicine and Obstetric Research

The Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine and Obstetrics at Stanford has an outstanding record of excellence in clinical investigation and translational medicine. Researchers in the division are focused on discovering ways to refine medication and treatment of preterm labor, treat depression in pregnancy, evaluate ethnic differences in pregnancy outcomes, manage placentation abnormalities, track placental gene expression throughout pregnancy and investigate human placental development. Collaboration with other disciplines led to highly productive genomic investigations that may help identify at-risk conditions or problems in fetal development. Numerous innovative obstetric clinical trials are conducted at our center currently.

Our division is part of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Stanford University School of Medicine. This center, funded by the March of Dimes and launched in March 2011 at Stanford University School of Medicine, is a collaborative effort between the two organizations that is dedicated to understanding and preventing preterm birth. The March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Stanford University School of Medicine brings together experts from a variety of disciplines, including maternal-fetal medicine, to develop new approaches toward studying and preventing preterm birth. This center has four goals: understanding the pathways that lead to preterm birth; predicting which women are at risk of delivering early; translating this research into clinical interventions and policy changes to prevent preterm delivery; and reducing the social disparities that contribute to preterm birth.

The Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine is a member of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units Network. A high-level collaboration between 14 academic centers around the country, the network participates in large clinical trials, investigating some of the most important problems in obstetrics. Two of the current studies in the network are a placebo-controlled clinical trial to determine whether administering Cytogom to pregnant women with primary CMV infection can prevent fetal transmission. Another study is a randomized trial of labor to compare induction at 39 weeks gestation versus expectant management in nulliparous women to assess the most optimal timing for delivery.

The division’s stature and quality are exemplified by state of the art research and treatment, sustaining Stanford’s commitment to caring for pregnant women and their newborns.