MODCAST
MODCAST is a podcast on the most impactful maternal and infant health research conducted today.
MODCAST aims to bring scientists, doctors, donors, and families behind the laboratory doors for a fascinating look into the science that is changing, study by study, the story of moms and babies in the U.S.
From interviews and news analysis to study discussions and more, MODCAST is the science community’s source for today’s preeminent research on moms and babies. Listen today.
Episode 29
Dr. Wendy Kuohung, the 2025 March of Dimes Discovery Research Grant winner, discusses her original research to find novel therapeutics to treat preeclampsia associated with APOL1 gene variants.
Episode 28
March of Dimes Research Center for Advancing Maternal Health Equity investigator Dr. Sindhu Srinivas and doula Alexia Doumbouya discuss leading a randomized controlled trial (RCT) on whether doula integration throughout pregnancy, birth, and postpartum can decrease maternal depression and anxiety.
Episode 27
Dr. Lars Bode, the founding director of the Human Milk Institute at UC San Diego, the university’s Larsson-Rosenquist Foundation Chair of Collaborative Human Milk Research, and a professor of pediatrics at the university, discusses human milk, informally known as breast milk, and all its healing properties—that are not only crucial for mothers and babies, but may benefit people of all ages.
Episode 26
Prof. Dennis Lo, the winner of the 2025 March of Dimes Richard B. Johnston, Jr., MD Prize who invented non-invasive prenatal testing, or NIPT, discusses the road to the discovery, the power of cell free DNA to detect cancer, and one of the places in the world he still hasn't been.
Episode 25
Dr. Tony Capra and Dr. Marina Sirota, scientists from the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center (PRC) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), discuss their foundational finding that spontaneous, or unplanned, preterm birth is fundamentally different from indicated preterm birth.
Episode 24
Dr. Diana Bianchi, a former March of Dimes Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award winner, discusses the ability of prenatal testing to detect maternal cancer, her discovery of microchimerism, a potential prenatal therapeutic for Down syndrome, and whether the subjects in Vermeer's paintings were pregnant. This episode was recorded March 4, 2025. As of the episode air date in May 2025, Dr. Bianchi no longer held the position of director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
Episode 23
Leading micronutrient expert Dr. Kimberly O’Brien, a Professor of Human Nutrition at Cornell University and the 2025 recipient of the March of Dimes Agnes Higgins Award in Maternal-Fetal Nutrition, discusses what we know—and don't know—about iron requirements, metabolism, and use in pregnancy.
Episode 22
Dr. Phillip Bennett, a co-director of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Imperial College London, discusses a historic randomized controlled trial (RCT) that will test a vaginal probiotic's ability to reduce preterm birth risk.
Episode 21
Dr. Jamie Lo, an Associate Professor at Oregon Health & Science University, and Dr. Adam Crosland, an Assistant Professor at Oregon Health & Science University, discuss the risks of substance use, particularly cannabis, in pregnancy.
Episode 20
Winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Dr. Victor Ambros and Dr. Gary Ruvkun give a rare, extended joint interview about their discovery of microRNA, from roundworms to humans. They discuss how childhood passions for astronomy shaped their paths, Dr. Ambros’ late father’s likely reaction to his Nobel win, and a surprising tale from Dr. Ruvkun’s trip to Bolivia.
Episode 19
March of Dimes Chief Scientific Advisor Dr. Emre Seli and Senior Director of Research Operations Jonathan Cherry reflect on MODCAST since its launch and share their outlook for episodes in 2025.
Episode 18
Dr. Sam Mesiano, an investigator at the March of Dimes Ohio Collaborative Prematurity Research Center, discusses the enzyme that leads to progesterone withdrawal and labor in cases of infection-related preterm birth—and how to use the enzyme to revive progesterone therapy to delay or stop preterm birth.
Episode 17
Dr. Alexiane Decout, an assistant professor in immunology at the University of Warwick, and Dr. David MacIntyre, one of the directors of the Prematurity Research Center at Imperial College London, discuss the biological advantage of Lactobacillus Crispatus, the most in-demand of all vaginal microbiome bacteria, which is protective against preterm birth.
Episode 16
March of Dimes Senior Director of Research Operations Jonathan Cherry discusses research grants and lifetime awards distributed annually by the organization, as well as the objectivity of the selection process, ease of applying, and underlying themes proposals should focus on.
Episode 15
Dr. Nima Aghaeepour, an investigator at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Stanford, and Dr. Sarah England, the director of the Center for Reproductive Health Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine, discuss a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) model that found that sleepers and movers have a 52% reduced risk of delivering early while those sleeping and moving less have a 44% increased risk of delivering early.
Episode 14
The 2024 winners of the March of Dimes Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Research Awards, Dr. Elizabeth Enninga and Dr. Mara Murray Horwitz, discuss their areas of study. Dr. Enninga, an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Immunology, at Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic, explains how cell free (cf) fetal DNA triggers labor and preterm birth, and how understanding more about this process can help prevent early labor and more effectively induce labor. Dr. Murray Horwitz, a primary care doctor at Boston Medical Center and an assistant professor of medicine at Boston University, discusses barriers women with a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy (HDP), like preeclampsia, face in achieving cardiac and overall health after childbirth, and delves into an intervention called patient navigation that can lessen those barriers.
Episode 13
Dr. Alan Flake, the Director of the Center for Fetal Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and 2021 March of Dimes Prize recipient, discusses the most impactful pursuits of his career: fetal surgery, the artificial womb, and in utero stem cell therapy.
Episode 12
Dr. Brice Gaudillière, an investigator at the March of Dimes Prematurity Center at Stanford University, discusses a breakthrough Machine Learning (ML) algorithm that makes reliable predictions about labor onset, preterm birth, and preeclampsia and also identifies the biological markers supporting those predictions.
Episode 11
Dr. Marisa Bartolomei, a University of Pennsylvania professor of cell and developmental biology, co-director of the university's Epigenetics Institute, and winner of the 2024 March of Dimes Richard B. Johnston, Jr., MD Prize, on discovering one of the first imprinted genes, making connections between imprinted gene mutations and developmental disorders, and uncovering the exact pathways of gene imprinting defects: namely, abnormalities in DNA methylation.
Episode 10
Former Stanford PRC collaborator Dr. Jonas Miller, now a Psychological Sciences Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut, discusses how the stress a woman experiences before pregnancy is associated with the way her child's brain functions around three to five years old. Those children, Dr. Miller found, have a harder time with impulse control.
Episode 9
Dr. Tim Hand, a March of Dimes researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, discusses the link between breast milk and a life-threatening preterm birth-related condition called necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). As it turns out, not all breastmilk is protective against NEC.
Episode 8
Dr. Elizabeth Cherot, the 6th and current President and CEO of March of Dimes, and first medical doctor to lead the organization since its founding in 1938, discusses the March of Dimes Innovation Fund.
Episode 7
Dr. Lynne Sykes, a co-director of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Imperial College London, discusses the immune cascade that triggers vaginal microbiome-driven preterm birth and a new vaginal supplement that could change the makeup of the vaginal microbiome to prevent this type of immune response.
Episode 6
Philadelphia neonatologists Dr. Jay Greenspan and Dr. Liz Foglia discuss three talks at the upcoming Hot Topics in Neonatology conference in Maryland: one on the lower limits of viability and the other two on racism in the NICU.
Episode 5
Dr. Nima Aghaeepour, a researcher at March of Dimes' Prematurity Research Center at Stanford, discusses a Machine Learning (ML) model that predicts prematurity-related newborn diseases weeks before they occur, including before a baby is even born.
Episode 4
A new test has been developed by Professor MacIntyre and his team at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Imperial College London that could provide nearly instantaneous identification of certain types of bacteria, indicating whether or not a woman may be at high risk for preterm birth.
Episode 3
We talk with Stanford University Science Fellow Dr. Mira Moufarrej on what we know about preeclampsia, why African American women are disproportionately impacted and a new blood test that could identify at-risk women in the first trimester.
Episode 2
Dr. Marina Sirota is an associate professor in the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute and the department of Pediatrics at University of California San Francisco and the principal investigator at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at University of California San Francisco. Her team is using Big Data to help predict when a woman may be at risk for preterm birth.
Episode 1
March of Dimes Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Emre Seli discusses the motivations behind the podcast, the research vision at March of Dimes, our belief in open, collaborative science, and our focus on translational research that makes a difference for moms.
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