A/Prof Jo James

Here (in work led by Dr Anna Boss and her student Isha) we are imaging the blood vessels in the placenta (red) and the surrounding tissue (green) in 3D to see how the vascular architecture of the placenta is impacted by obesity.

A shout out to various members of my team who have been spending way too much time recently in dark basements imaging bits of placenta with the new lightsheet microscope (with much troubleshooting) and processing the resulting datasets… but the results when it works! 🤩 @anzpra1.bsky.social

And yes, I did send many follow up emails over this time, and threatened to pull it at least once!

New record - got a manuscript outcome notification today for a paper I submitted in November 2023 🤯 TWENTY-ONE MONTHS to reach a first decision of minor revisions. The system is broken. 😒 #atleastitwasntrejected

This paper has been building for a while - started by gene expression work done by Teena Gamage in her PhD, and then contains almost all of Cherry Sun’s PhD work following this up in functional experiments. Amazing work by these two! 🤩

This helps explain why FGR placentas are smaller and less able to transport oxygen and nutrients to the baby. Knowing this will hopefully let us identify therapeutic strategies to target this upstream dysfunction, in turn improving a range of downstream consequences for the placenta.

Feels like it’s been a while between papers.. but pleased to say our latest is now out! Here we used the side-population technique to isolate trophoblast stem cells from term placentas, showing that in FGR they grow slower, die more easily, and have impaired differentiation. doi.org/10.1016/j.ye...

Fun day at the Rosehill College Hauora expo sharing our love of all things placenta, and our work aimed at better interpreting ultrasound in pregnancy to improve detection of at risk babies. New hologram was a hit (looks better irl), and tons of kids through 😃 #teamplacenta #pregnancymodellinggroup

(Final paper from her PhD hopefully out soon 🤞🤞... watch this space!)

Congrats to Dr Cherry Sun on officially joining the floppy hat club yesterday! 🥂🌟 Cherry’s thesis showed functional impairments in trophoblast stem cells from FGR placentae - they grow slower, die easier, & differentiate differently - which may explain placental changes seen in this disorder.

Super grateful for this generous philanthropic support of our work to develop sex-specific virtual placenta models, which we hope to use to develop more personalised tools to aid early identification of babies at risk of being born dangerously small.

www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2025...

My pleasure to talk about our work on data-driven models of the feto-placental circulation at #SRI2025 in Charlotte today. Thank you to the audience for so much wonderful interaction after! 🙏

Saw the below chart, realised that individual universities in the US can get about 5x more $ from the NIH alone than our entire country has available to apply for from its two biggest funders (HRC and Marsden, together ~$200 million NZD). Cool cool.

👏👏👏 what BMJ said 👏👏👏

The list of forbidden words for scientific researchers in the United States of America in the year 2025.

I’m keeping my upcoming March 🇺🇸 conference plans that are booked because a) can’t get the money back, and b) our US colleagues in women’s health at said conference are not the enemy and need our support. But I will be trying to avoid US travel after that tbh.

Larry has a real one in his office next door to me (not signed), I’m not sure he will part with it when he retires, but I swear to god if it isn’t left to me in his will….

Hey placenta/pregnancy people - happy to share that we've now set #ANZPRA up over here! 🥳

Exploring the Lifeline: Unpacking the Complexities of Placental Vascular Function in Normal and Preeclamptic Pregnancies The proper development and function of the placenta are essential for the success of pregnancy and the well-being of both the fetus and the mother. Placental vascular function facilitates efficient f....

Beautiful review on the placental vasculature and is known of its altered function in pre-eclampsia by Hanna Allerkamp and colleagues at MedUniGraz👏 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

We can tell the truth about pregnancy without scaring women to death – in fact, it’s vital that we do | Emily Oster Many women have no idea about the potential complications until they happen. Without discussion there is no treatment or prevention There is an inherent tension between two basic facts about childbirth. On the one hand, it has happened billions and…

We can tell the truth about pregnancy without scaring women to death – in fact, it’s vital that we do | Emily Oster

It’s impossible to get as it has been out of print so long. When Larry retires and the copy I use is at risk of leaving the building you will find me begging desperately at his door for the mere hope of it passing on to me… 🤞🤞

This research should be done in NZ.. because I am the one who had the idea and has the background that best places me to do the research, and you should count yourself lucky that I currently still live/work in NZ and it can be done here 🤷‍♀️. Honestly 🤬 to all of this.

Congratulations to Anandita Umapathy on her PhD graduation today! Great to have her back in NZ to celebrate together 🥳 🥂#sillyhatday @aucklanduni.bsky.social

This was part of the great work Cherry Sun did in her PhD (with more to come..), and was made possible thanks to funding from @ranzcog.bsky.social Mercia Barnes Trust and the AMRF (@medresearchnz.bsky.social) who supported her PhD scholarship 🙏

Feels like it's been a minute.. but happy to announce the latest #JamesLab paper is now out! 🥳 Here we take a dive into trophoblast organoid models to think about the role of trophoblast stem cells in organoid formation. doi.org/10.1016/j.pl... #teamplacenta #organoids

🔥🔥👇👇

Seems like a great reason to hold more US based meetings in Hawaii.. 😉

Govt cuts humanities and social science funding - Expert Reaction Humanities and social science funding has been cut from the Marsden Fund, the main fund for 'blue-skies' research in Aotearoa New Zealand. The areas that have been cut include research in subjects lik...

More on Marsden’s dark day: There’s detailed comments via SMC www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2024/12/04/g...

A bit slow on this, but now there is a media piece.. stoked that Alys & I got a Marsden grant recently to further explore the biomechanical relationship between the placenta & heart in utero, and how this may impact fetal heart dysfunction in very small babies. 🥳🫀 www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2024...