Tommy'S Midwives

Since 1992, Tommy’s has been determined to create a pregnancy research network of worldwide importance, so more babies can be born healthily

Tommy’s third research centre, at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, was opened in April 2008. Led by Professor Jane Norman, the focus of the team is on discovering ways to alleviate the risks and problems caused by maternal obesity. Other areas of research interest include blood vessel and tissue remodelling, fetal ‘programming’, inflammation, hypoxia and the process of labour and childbirth and maternal depression /stress.

Situated in the state-of-the-art buildings of the Queen’s Medical Research Institute, the centre is helping to make Tommy’s maternal and fetal research network a truly major force worldwide. It has 35 core staff and in 2013 /2014 published 59 scientific papers in the pregnancy field in peer-reviewed medical journals. The centre has developed excellent collaborative links with the sister Tommy’s centres in London and Manchester, as well as with other relevant groups within Edinburgh and beyond. A major achievement has been the award of Centre status from the Medical Research Council (MRC), with the MRC Centre for Reproductive Health opening in April 2011. The Tommy’s centre is an integral part of the MRC Centre and is key to one of its main themes: ‘Developmental programming and reproductive resilience’.

The centre opened the Tommy’s Antenatal Metabolic Clinic in August 2008 and it is now providing specialised care to around 200 obese pregnant women per year. This clinic provides the infrastructure for most of the centre’s work on obesity in human pregnancy, and it has become a template for similar clinics around the UK.

Core funding from Tommy’s has allowed the Edinburgh centre to develop new research threads that are crucial for better understanding and treatment of complications associated with pregnancy.

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