Project Grant R01HD113889

This federal Project Grant award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), under the Child Health and Human Development Extramural Research program (CFDA 93.865), provides $601,499 to The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania to conduct research on how maternal obesity alters mitochondrial function in offspring and leads to the development of obesity and metabolic syndrome later in life.

The key research objectives are to: 1) determine if the transfer of damaged mitochondrial cargo from adipocyte extracellular vesicles (EVs) of obese pregnant dams to embryos alters embryo metabolic function in a sex-specific manner, and 2) assess if these maternally-derived mitochondria from obese dams result in epigenomic changes in the embryo that contribute to the development of obesity in the offspring. Advanced analytical techniques such as single-cell RNA sequencing, ATAC-seq, and chromatin capture will be utilized to map cell-cell interactions and genomic changes. The research aims to elucidate the molecular mechanisms linking maternal obesity to long-term metabolic dysfunction in offspring. The award period is from June 5, 2025 to May 31, 2030.