Prof Donald Peebles
UCL Professor of Maternal and Fetal Medicine
UCLH Consultant
Prof Donald Peebles is a graduate of Cambridge University and then Guys and St Thomas’ Medical School. His MD thesis, obtained at UCL, described the use of near infrared spectroscopy for assessing fetal brain oxygenation during labour. Much of his research since then has used MR and NIRS spectroscopy and imaging to investigate the effects of hypoxia and infection on the developing brain. He has been Head of the Research Department of Maternal Fetal Medicine at UCL since 2008. He has a number of research interests that focus on improving the outcomes for women and their babies following complicated pregnancies. Particular research areas include:
- maternal innate immunity, infection, inflammation and preterm labour
- the role of hypoxia and inflammation in causation of perinatal brain injury
- fetal physiology (especially fetal responses to acute and chronic substrate deprivation)
- the development of novel molecular and cellular methods for treatment of fetal disease.
He is also a Consultant at UCLH with sub-specialty accreditation in Maternal Fetal medicine in 1990. He provides a range of diagnostic and therapeutic services on the Fetal Medicine unit with particular interests in the management of fetal growth restriction as well as the management of fetal rhesus disease. He is a faculty member of the Infection, inflammation and Immunity Theme of the NIHR UCLH Biomedical Research Centre.
GIFT-Surg focus
To ensure that the major advances in fetal imaging and instrumentation that will come from this grant lead to improvements in outcome for fetuses with a range of congenital abnormalities. Particular clinical challenges include the difficulty of accessing fetal blood vessels and organs as early as twelve weeks gestation (when the fetus is only 5cms long), optimizing the therapy that will be delivered (eg cells, genes or surgical accessories such as balloons or patches), ensuring patient safety and engaging with stakeholders to address ethical concerns at an early stage in the development of new techniques. This will involve a staged process of experimentation using phantoms to model the anatomy of the early pregnancy gestation sac/fetus, suitable animal models and finally the first in human experiments/optimizing existing fetal surgery procedures. A particular focus will be the use of improved imaging and registration techniques to improve clinical training in commonly used fetal medicine diagnostic and therapeutic techniques to reduce the risk of miscarriage or early delivery.