Conclusion
Omic strategies still provide many challenges: the
technology and the software are still evolving and
mapping the human proteome and metabolome is
still ongoing. Pregnancy is a unique physiological
state and pregnancy conditions can be extremely
heterogeneous. Carefully designed experiments,
accompanied by appropriate analytical techniques
and statistical analyses, will assist in tackling many
of these challenges, with the potential to generate
reliable validated data to answer important
biological questions.
The SCOPE study (see Websites) is actively
recruiting. This is a collaboration of many
international leading obstetricians and scientists
seeking to develop novel, effective ways for the early
prediction of nulliparous women at high risk of the
three major complications of late pregnancy: preeclampsia,
spontaneous preterm birth and fetal
growth restriction. An extensive clinical database
combined with genomic/proteomic/metabolomic
data may provide the means for predictive
screening tests to be developed.