Validation of the guinea-pig as an appropriate model for human labour: HDAC inhibitors as tocolytics for preterm labour.

早产(PTL)仍然是21世纪妊娠的主要并发症，目前尚无广泛有效的临床治疗策略。虽然大多数婴儿是在足月妊娠结束时出生的，但在英国，每年有近6万婴儿早产，因为母亲过早进入分娩阶段。早产儿童可能面临残疾和终生疾病的高风险。然而，尽管进行了密集的研究，我们仍然无法预防PTL。一个根本的问题是，我们对导致分娩的子宫肌肉协调收缩以及如何用药物抑制它们缺乏了解。这一失败还与缺乏反映人类劳动的合适的动物模型有关，在这种模型中，我们可以为PTL开发新的药物疗法。这项合作项目赠款将国际专家聚集在一起，共同致力于解决这些问题。特别是，我们将测试我们的建议，即怀孕的豚鼠作为子宫收缩和人类分娩的有用模型，而不是目前受欢迎的啮齿动物模型。我们将通过检查抑制一类被称为HDAC的分子的新药是否真的可以降低这个豚鼠模型中PTL的发生率或严重程度来做到这一点。如果是这样的话，他们将为人类PTL的临床治疗提供新的可能性。

Preterm labour (PTL) continues to be a major complication of pregnancy in the 21st Century for which there is no broadly effective therapeutic clinical strategy. Whilst most infants are delivered at the end of a full-term pregnancy, nearly 60,000 per year in the UK are born early because the mother goes into labour too soon. Prematurely born children may face a high risk of disability and life-long ill health. However, despite intensive research we remain unable to prevent PTL. One of the fundamental problems is our poor understanding of the co-ordinated contractions in the muscles of the uterus which lead to delivery and how to inhibit them with drugs. This failure is also linked to a lack of suitable animal models reflective of human labour in which we can develop new drug therapies for PTL. This Collaborative Project Grant brings together international experts with the common goal of addressing these issues. In particular, we will test our suggestion that the pregnant guinea pig serves as a useful model uterine contraction and human labour over that of currently favoured rodent models. We will do this by examining if new drugs that inhibit a class of molecules known as HDACs can actually reduce the incidence or severity of PTL in this guinea pig model. If so, they will offer new possibilities for the clinical treatment in humans of PTL.