NHMRC Ideas Grant funding success for preeclampsia project

Associate Professor Tu'uhevaha Kaitu'u-Lino with Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt and NHMRC CEO Professor Anne Kelso AO

Associate Professor Tu'uhevaha Kaitu'u-Lino and her co-investigators Professor Sue Walker and Dr Teresa MacDonald have been awarded $1.1 million as part of the NHMRC Ideas Grants scheme for 2021.

The award was announced in mid December by the Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt and NHMRC CEO Anne Kelso who visited the Mercy Hospital for Women, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology to announce the scheme funding.

Associate Professor Tu’uhevaha Kaitu’u-Lino’s grant – titled ‘Developing a screening test to identify women at risk of preeclampsia’ – aims to develop new blood tests that could be offered universally to all pregnant women to identify those at greatest risk of this serious complication.

The research team will use large collections of human blood samples to screen for novel proteins within pregnant women's blood. They will then use artificial intelligence to select the best biomarkers and combine them with clinical information to develop a multi-marker blood test to predict women at risk.