Working alongside Flinders University’s Dr Amy Wyatt, PhD candidate Demi Georgiou is investigating whether pregnancy zone protein (PZP) – a molecule found in large amounts in the blood of pregnant women – controls the activity of a second protein, called chymase, that has a role in increasing blood pressure.

“The results generated so far suggest that during pregnancy, PZP is an important binding partner for chymase, with its likely role to facilitate the removal of chymase from the bloodstream and other biological fluids, thereby helping to control blood pressure,” Demi explains.

“We need to do further experiments to confirm this is the case, but this is an important preliminary finding considering that elevated blood pressure is a hallmark of preeclampsia, a potentially life-threatening complication of pregnancy.

“Targeting the PZP-chymase interaction could offer a new therapeutic strategy to control blood pressure.”

“By performing experiments that help to reveal how blood pressure is normally controlled in pregnancy, we are contributing to the framework for designing novel strategies for protecting women and babies from the dangerous effects of high blood pressure in pregnancy,” Demi says. 

“Additionally, our research has broader relevance to hypertension (high blood pressure) independent of pregnancy, which occurs in more than one billion people worldwide.”

Demi’s project has been supported by a Flinders Foundation Health Seed Grant, with the project soon progressing to investigate what happens in the presence of cultured human cells and in human biological fluids such as blood plasma from pregnant women.