Wellcome Leap partners with Medicines360 to advance maternal health tools globally
Wellcome Leap and Medicines360 launched a partnership last week aimed at accelerating the development of maternal health tools globally.
San Diego-based Wellcome Leap helps build and fund projects that improve human health. Meanwhile, San Francisco-based Medicines360 is an innovation organization that helps develop and launch products for women.
Working together, the organizations will develop blood tests and non-invasive eye imaging tools to better predict the risk of common pregnancy complications associated with about half of stillbirths. It builds on advanced designs from Wellcome Leap's In Utero program, which is launching in 2022 at a cost of $50 million. Technologies developed under the program include:
- Blood biomarkers of fetal growth restriction, gestational diabetes and preeclampsia, University of Cambridge
- University of Edinburgh's retinal eye imaging technology aims to detect blood vessel-related diseases such as pre-eclampsia
Medicines360 will lead the development of these products and will begin testing them in clinical trials this summer. Diagnosis will be done throughout the first trimester of pregnancy (when the risk is greatest).
“The ultimate goal is to develop diagnostic tests that can be deployed broadly, rather than on very complex analytical systems that are expensive and can be used in more sophisticated labs,” Medicines360 CEO Dr. Andrea Olariu said in an interview. “Our goal is really to develop tests that can be deployed in rural areas, and we'll start with the UK and the US, but then the goal is to scale globally and make this test available in low- and middle-income countries as well.”
She added that this would help reduce gaps in maternal health services, balance medical interventions such as caesarean sections, and improve early detection of complications and ongoing monitoring throughout pregnancy.
Around the world, more than 2 million pregnancies end in stillbirth each year. In the United States, more than 1 in 150 births ends in stillbirth, and about 30 percent of stillbirths occur during pregnancies without identifiable risk factors, according to an October 2025 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Low-income families are especially at risk. That’s what this collaboration hopes to change.
“Before you read this paragraph, another baby will be stillborn. Every 16 seconds, a mother, a family, grieves this loss. Women deserve more clarity about their pregnancy health,” Wellcome Leap CEO Regina E. Dugan said in a statement. “By combining Wellcome Leap's scientific breakthroughs with Medicines360 Combining our global innovation and access models, we can deliver predictive tools to mothers around the world before it’s too late.”
Image credit: Blue Planet Studios, Getty Images
