MBL Friday Evening Lecture Series: “The Time to Be Born” – Louis Muglia, Burroughs Wellcome Fund

What determines the timing for birth? This question is one of the great unsolved mysteries in biology and has enormous health relevance to impact upon preterm birth, the leading cause of death of infants and children under 5 years old. This presentation will describe the utility of human genetics and genomics to understand normal birth timing and how this mechanism malfunctions to lead to preterm birth. Evidence will be presented that genetics plays an important role in shaping maternal risk for preterm birth. Moreover, recent genome wide association studies that identify novel loci robustly associated with the risk for prematurity will be described and what the ramification of these are for interventions. Finally, the potential to exploit unique aspects of human evolution in shaping pregnancy characteristics using comparative genomics and animal models will be conveyed.

Louis Muglia is President and CEO of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, an independent nonprofit research foundation accelerating discovery in the biomedical sciences. Previously, he served as Vice Chair for Research, Director of the Division of Human Genetics, Co-Director of the Perinatal Institute, and Professor of Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Muglia’s research focus has been to understand the molecular pathways determining when birth occurs to prevent preterm birth and better treat human preterm labor and delivery, considering both genetic and environmental factors. Priorities now at Burroughs Wellcome Fund include climate change and human health, promoting diversity and equity in science, and science communication, better partnering science and the arts. Among Muglia’s achievements are more than 300 publications and election to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and Association of American Physicians, American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Medicine, and the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. Muglia earned his Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Chicago. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Michigan.