Home Faculty Charles E. Wood, Ph.D.
The research performed in the Wood laboratory is focused on the physiology of the late-gestation fetus and the mechanisms that ready the fetus for birth and transition to extrauterine life. The Wood laboratory has contributed to our understanding of the responses to stress (hypoxia and hypotension) in the fetus in utero and on the mechanisms controlling the timing of birth. This laboratory has published research results which have played a leading role in elucidating the function of the fetal arterial baroreceptors and chemoreceptors in the control of fetal cardiovascular and endocrine function. Other research performed in this laboratory has identified the cardiovascular neural receptors which are involved in the integrated cardiovascular and endocrine response to alterations in blood gases and blood pressure in the fetus. Complementary to this work has been discovery of the influence of the fetal endocrine systems, especially the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis and the adrenal-placental steroid axis, on the physiological mechanisms supporting survival and growth of the fetus.
Recent discoveries in this laboratory have focused on the intersection between stress, inflammation, and normal birth. The laboratory has made seminal contributions to our understanding of the role that prostaglandins play in fetal development. Recently, collaborative work between the Wood laboratory and the Triplett laboratory in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has discovered that fetal brain inflammation after fetal and maternal stress is caused by movement of live bacteria from the mother to the fetus. This new discovery has the potential to change treatment to prevent hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy in the newborn infant.
Together, the studies performed in the Wood laboratory interrelate to advance our knowledge of normal and abnormal fetal development, with the ultimate goal of improving outcomes for babies.