Suhas Kallapur, MD, chief of neonatology and developmental biology and professor of pediatrics at the Mattel Children’s Hospital and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, has been awarded a $3.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. This funding will support his research on prevention of infection induced preterm births using a derivative of the hormone progesterone (promegestone). Promegestone was developed in Europe in the 1970s and used clinically for Gynecological indications in some European countries. If successful, this research will open new indications for the drug.
In 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration withdrew approval for the use of the synthetic hormone hydroxy-progesterone acetate to prevent preterm births due to its lack of effectiveness. As a result, there are currently no FDA-approved drugs for preventing preterm births. The basis of the grant is that unlike the recently withdrawn drug. Promegestone is not metabolized to an inactive form in the uterus. This property is predicted to allow Promegestone to prolong pregnancies during preterm labor. The pre-clinical work will be done in primate animal models developed by Dr. Kallapur and team.
Most of Kallapur’s work is in translational research consisting of pre-clinical and human subject research. His NIH-funded research primarily focuses on how inflammation at the maternal-fetal interface triggers preterm labor and causes fetal organ injury.
The study will be done with the help of researchers at Case Western Reserve university and UC Davis.
