I’m pleased to be attending the Society for Reproductive Investigation Annual Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico with Eric McClellan’s intern, Emma Harris-Clippinger. Emma is an undergraduate student at the University of Oregon who is interested in a career in women’s health, pregnancy, and parturition. She’s been working with Eric to analyze lung tissue from our experimental model of hypoplastic left heart syndrome. In this syndrome, human fetuses fail to develop a functional left ventricle and require a series of palliative surgeries after birth. Prior to birth the defect is less lethal because cardiac ventricles pump together in parallel because oxygenation occurs in the placenta instead of the lungs. However, flow to the fetal lungs may be altered. Consequently, Eric and Emma are studying their development in our experimental model. Emma presented her abstract “Heterogenous Pulmonary Artery Remodeling in a Fetal Sheep Model of Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome,” attracting lots of interested scientists coming to ask questions. Well done, Emma!
