Next Gen Pregnancy Initiative

Grants to USA and Canada nonprofit organizations, research institutes, and IHEs for research projects addressing the biological mechanisms of premature birth. Funding is intended to support studies that explore the causes, diagnostics, and therapeutic interventions surrounding adverse pregnancies. Proposals may involve computational or molecular approaches, such as immunology, genetics, genomics, mathematics, microbiology, and other basic sciences.

Building upon the original goals of the BWF Preterm Birth Initiative, a recently convened Pregnancy Think Tank has helped shape the next generation of BWF preterm birth awards. Growing evidence suggests the interrelatedness of the duration of pregnancy, fetal growth, and adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preterm birth, preeclampsia, intrauterine growth restriction, stillbirth, and maternal medical complications including maternal mortality. Other areas of interest are climate change and environmental impact on pregnancy, complications associated with ART, and epigenome-wide association studies.

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) seeks to expand the scope of this award mechanism to capture these and other pregnancy outcomes as they believe they will be mutually informative and accelerate discovery. 

The initiative is designed to stimulate both creative individual scientists and multi-investigator teams to approach healthy and adverse pregnancy outcomes using creative basic and translation science methods. The formation of new connections between reproductive scientists and investigators who are involved in other areas is particularly encouraged.

Molecular and computational approaches such as genetics/ genomics, immunology, microbiology, evolutionary biology, mathematics, engineering, and other basic sciences hold enormous potential for new insights independently or in conjunction with more traditional areas of parturition research such as maternal-fetal medicine, obstetrics, and pediatrics. BWF encourages applications seeking actionable therapeutic interventions, novel diagnostics, and device development for real time data capture, and particularly those investigating mechanisms of racial disparities in pregnancy outcomes.

Proposals should address the biomedical causes and molecular mechanisms underlying adverse pregnancies and their outcomes including but not limited to peri-implantational events, placentation, fetal determinants, fetal-maternal immune responses, biological basis for racial-ethnic disparities, mechanisms relating preterm birth to other adverse pregnancy outcomes, biology of normal labor, genomics, evolutionary influences, maternal complications and other approaches. Proposals seeking to identify biomarkers predicting preterm birth are welcome.

BWF is also interested in Preterm Birth Risk Stratification using artificial intelligence and machine learning.