Early pregnancy in the mare: mechanisms of immune recognition and novel assays for pregnancy testing

Summary

Diagnosis
of early pregnancy and limited understanding of the causes of early pregnancy
loss continue to impact the efficiency of thoroughbred breeding. This project
builds on preliminary data generated under PRJ-011748 – Developing a novel
diagnostic test for early pregnancy in the mare, where the project team
discovered several blood plasma biomarkers for early pregnancy in the mare, to
further develop these markers into practical assays and integrate these assays
with cutting-edge fluorescent nanoparticle technology to enhance sensitivity,
facilitate rapid detection and develop prototype devices.

Program

Thoroughbred Horses

Research Organisation

The University of Newcastle

Objective Summary

1.Develop a set of
lab assays to measure blood markers of early pregnancy identified in our
previous study
2.Establish cut-off
values for detecting pregnancy using these assays
3.Analyse differences in cell-free RNA profiles between pregnant and non-pregnant mares and develop qPCR-based detection kits to measure these in blood plasma
4.Map the changes in
mare immune system function that are related to early pregnancy