Assessment of Placental Transport Function in Studies of Disease Programming.

Environmental conditions during pregnancy affect fetal growth and development and program the offspring for poor future health. These effects may be mediated by the placenta, which develops to transfer nutrients from the mother to the fetus for growth. The ability to measure the unidirectional maternofetal transfer of non-metabolizable radio-analogues of glucose and amino acid by the placenta in vivo has thus been invaluable to our understanding of the regulation of fetal growth, particularly in small animal models. Herein, I describe the method by which in vivo placental transfer function can be quantified in the mouse, an animal model widely used in studies of in utero disease programming.