Consortium for the Study of Pregnancy and Prenatal Development

The Consortium for the Study of Pregnancy and Prenatal Development at St. Bonaventure University studies the factors that impact pregnancy and prenatal development

The consortium's goal is to improve local and global knowledge of those factors, and to improve the well-being of developing embryos, fetuses, infants, mothers and all other stakeholders in pregnancy health.

The consortium was developed by professors of biology, chemistry, education and nursing, whose disciplines all play a part in investigating various aspects of pregnancy and prenatal development. Through the consortium, the researchers share their expertise so as to benefit from each other's work, and in an effort to better understand this vast and critically important field of study.

Consortium members

Dr. Adam Brown, professor of education
Brown's expertise is in human development, which he has taught for 20 years. He developed an honors course titled "Human Pregnancy" and he’s collecting research for a pregnancy textbook. Brown also is researching ways to reduce nausea and vomiting during pregnancy (NVP) while increasing health outcomes for embryos and fetuses.
Brown's research team

Dr. Xiao-Ning Zhang, professor of biology
Zhang is director of the university's biochemistry program. She studies the production of compounds in plants that, if ingested in high dosage, have the potential to disturb development of the embryo or fetus. Her work could lead to strategies to prevent vegetables from making high levels of these compounds before they go to market.
The Zhang Lab website

Dr. Scott Simpson, assistant professor of chemistry
Simpson’s work is specifically designed to remove pesticide residuals from food. Many of these pesticides are neurotoxins or hormone/endocrine disruptors that can greatly effect a developing fetus.
The Simpson Research Group

Dr. Connie Perkins, founding director of nursing
Perkins worked in maternity and the nursery at UPMC Cole in Coudersport, Pennsylvania, before coming to St. Bonaventure. She was certified in neonatal resuscitation and pediatric advanced life support. Her role in the consortium is to dispense critical information to working nurses.

Study by chemistry professor and recent graduate accepted for publication

Apr 15, 2020 A publication by Alex Izydorczak, a 2019 graduate of the Department of Chemistry, and Dr. Scott Simpson, assistant professor of chemistry, has been accepted for publication in ChemistrySelect, a journal of ChemPubSoc Europe.

Their publication, titled "Accurate Prediction of Gas Chromatographic Retention Times via Density Functional Theory Calculations: A Case Study Using Brominated Flame Retardants," looks at using computations to study polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), a class of legacy flame retardants.

This study allows for people to use computations, rather than chemicals, to identify the pollutants in environmental and/or tissue samples. Additional collaborators include researchers in the research group of Dr. Diana Aga, professor of chemistry at University at Buffalo.

PBDEs are chemicals that have been used in a wide variety of products such as building materials, plastics, and even furnishings. Because of their toxicity, industrial production of some PBDEs is restricted by the Stockholm Convention, a treaty to control and phase out major persistent organic pollutants. In fact, only some of the possible forms of the large class of PBDEs have been phased out of manufacturing in 2004 (penta- and octaBDEs).

The St. Bonaventure Consortium for the Study of Pregnancy and Prenatal Development, of which Simpson is a member, is interested in factors that impact pregnancy and prenatal development. This publication by Izydorczak et. al. is directly in line with these initiatives as PBDEs have been reported to be found in breast milk, human serum, and even in infants.

Additionally, studies have shown a significant decrease in mental developmental scores for children exposed to high levels of PBDEs.

The article can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/slct.201904878