In the first weeks of life, babies are exposed to a number of new viruses and bacteria, making them vulnerable to infection. To help protect them from these infections, they are born with protective antibodies that have been transferred from their mothers during pregnancy. These antibodies are transported from the mother to the baby via the placenta, which acts as the barrier between the bloodstream of the two.

To help further protect babies, we can give women vaccines during pregnancy, which boosts the amount of antibody transferred to their babies. Improving our understanding of how the placenta transfers antibody, and which kind of antibodies are best transported, will help us to design better vaccines. In their pump-priming project 'The human placental perfusion model: advance in knowledge of maternofetal antibody transfer,' Beth Holder from Imperial College London and her team used human placental samples to study this in the laboratory. These have advantages over mouse models, which have different placental structure to humans. With the data obtained during this study, the scientists were able to figure out the best laboratory system to mimic the placental barrier to study antibody transport during pregnancy. Beth Holder and her team will be using this system in future studies to investigate which kind of natural and engineered antibodies are best transported by the placenta. The overall aim of this work is to design better strategies to protect babies from infections.