Illustrating two families’ stories of preterm birth
Alongside our scientific work, communicating with the wider world about the topics of preterm birth and brain injury has been one of our focuses in PREMSTEM. Growing Together – A Shared Journey from the NICU to Now is an illustrated story created by members of the consortium and the PCAB in collaboration with professional illustrators. Sophia and Adam were born preterm. In this story, told through their parents’ eyes, we discover moments in their lives since they bonded in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and learn about support networks based in the care of teachers and the guidance of medical experts. Through the power of illustration, our aim has been to create a realistic story to help families and caregivers to understand how preterm birth may impact their lives. We hope it will help families to understand how life might look when a child is born too soon and serve as a tool for…
Global experts converge in Barcelona for the PREMSTEM Conference: Research into neonatal brain repair
From 13 to 15 May 2025 the PREMSTEM consortium was joined in Barcelona by members of the scientific community, medical professionals, and parent and patient representatives from Europe, North America and Australia for our final conference. The conference theme ‘Research into neonatal brain repair’ set the scene to present PREMSTEM’s scientific findings to the public after over five years of dedicated research into human mesenchymal stem cells, and their potential to treat brain injury after preterm birth. The programme centred on topics related to the scientific work carried out by PREMSTEM researchers, but with the aim of going beyond the project’s own work to explore research activities, findings and experiences of leading international researchers working in related topics of brain injury. Following a call for abstracts, researchers from around the world joined us to present their own important work looking at the vulnerable newborn brain, including events such as hypoxic-ischemia…
2025 Annual meeting
The PREMSTEM team met in Barcelona on 12 and 13 May 2025 for the annual in person meeting, held just before the project’s public conference. Invited to the meeting were consortium partners as well as members of our scientific advisory boards. We shared our latest research progress and findings as well as updates related to the project’s important community engagement and dissemination activities. It was also an opportunity to discuss our future plans, including the translation of our work to the clinic and the strategies for disseminating our many results through scientific and wider public audience focused publications. Highlights from the annual meeting: We look forward to catching up again on online in September 2025.
Researchers to showcase research into neonatal brain repair at the PREMSTEM Conference
The brain injury in the premature born infant: stem cell regeneration research network (PREMSTEM) is holding its final conference from 13 to 15 May 2025. The meeting will take place in Hotel SB Diagonal Zero in the Poblenou area of Barcelona, Spain. Since 2020, PREMSTEM has been focused on investigating human mesenchymal stem cells from donated umbilical cord tissue as a potential therapy to treat brain injury related to preterm birth. Now in the final year of the project, the consortium invites medical professionals, members of the scientific community, policy makers, professionals working in regulatory bodies, and parent and patient associations to hear the latest research related to improving outcomes for children and families affected by brain injury. Keynote speaker Associate Professor Atul Malhotra, a senior neonatologist at Monash Children’s Hospital, and a research academic in the Department of Paediatrics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia will talk about his…
End of year message from the PREMSTEM coordinator
Once again, a busy year for PREMSTEM with progress made across all scientific work packages as well as an acceleration in the dissemination of our results through new publications and conference talks. Furthermore, planning is underway for our own conference in May 2025. This year, the European Commission approved an extension of PREMSTEM until the end of 2025, mainly due to delays we experienced in our scientific work during the Covid pandemic. We also received positive feedback in the recent review meeting with external reviewers. Scientific progress Our labs continue to investigate the potential of human mesenchymal stem cells (H-MSCs) originating from umbilical cord tissue as a potential treatment option for brain injury related to preterm birth. The following is a summary of the work that has taken place this year. The teams at the University of Maastricht and RMIT University have completed the short-term investigations in the large…
PhD candidates and postdoc researchers present at the 2024 PREMSTEM annual meeting
On 11 June 2024 in Gothenburg, PREMSTEM’s young investigators presented their latest research to other members of the consortium. This session has become a tradition at the project’s annual in person meeting following similar session in 2022 and 2023. This year’s presenters were: Lotte Smeets, PhD candidate at Maastricht University: Biodistribution of MSCs after intravenous and intranasal administration. Lotte has been studying the biodistribution of stem cells in a preclinical large animal model of preterm birth after intravenous administration, and the biodistribution of stem cells after intranasal administration in a preclinical small animal model of preterm birth. Both studies use gold nanoparticles as a trace source. Ezgi Şengün, PhD candidate at Radboudumc: Human mesenchymal stem cells induce immune memory response through down regulation of key molecular pathways. Ezgi presented her research into the downstream effect of human mesenchymal stem cells on T cells to find out about the different pathways…
2024 Annual meeting
The PREMSTEM team met in Gothenburg on 10 and 11 June 2024 for the annual in person meeting and Young Investigator Session. Thank you to Henrik Hagberg from the University of Gothenburg for his hard work to host the PREMSTEM consortium in Sweden while also organising the biannual Hershey Conference on Developmental Brain Injury that started the day after. Besides hearing comprehensive updates from each work package leader, we also listened to a presentation from the Chiesi team about the road to clinical trials and got an update from RMIT Europe about the PREMSTEM final conference which is currently in the planning. Some key points from the discussions at the annual meeting: Our next meeting will be held in 2025 before the final conference in Barcelona.
Our co-creation journey comes to an end
In our final workshop, we co-designed solutions to two more issues which came up in interviews with parents
Introducing Lotte Smeets
Lotte is a PhD student at the MERLN Institute and the Department of Paediatrics at Maastricht University
Co-creating the final steps of the roadmap
The roadmap prototype aims to improve the clinical trials experience for families