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Podcast: Preprints in Motion
Episode: Episode 24: Baby hearts, inflammation and precarious postdocs
Description: This week we discuss placental inflammation and heart development with postdoc Eleanor Jayne Ward and PI Suchita Nadkarni (@SciSuchita) from Queen Mary, University of London. In this preprint, the authors show that during embryonic heart development, neutrophils (innate immune cells) can sometimes cause placental inflammation. This inflammation leads to a loss of barrier function. In turn, this allows maternal monocytes (innate immune cells that develop into macrophages) to migrate into the embryonic heart. These monocytes alter the tissue resident embryonic macrophages and damage cardiac tissue. This cardiac damage continues postnatally. We discuss this and how limiting placental inflammation was...