Coculture of decidua and trophoblast to study prol

[caryn]

...In order to understand this important biological process and to characterize some of its regulatory factors, we have developed a model of coculture of decidual and cytotrophoblastic cells in which we can evaluate the effect of each partner on the proliferative and invasive properties of the other...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19495696

Oh, *cool*. One thing that's been complicating research into how, exactly, one ends up with a shallowly implanted placenta is that placentas have maternal and paternal sides. They're formed from a combination of the part of the blastocyst that turns into placenta instead of embryo, in which the maternal genes are switched off via epigenetics -- the trophoblast -- and the part of the maternal uterine lining into which the trophoblast embeds -- the decidua. Previous attempts to culture trophoblastic cells have pretty much failed, because they're only fit for a particular environment, inside a female reproductive tract. If this works properly, we won't just have a "pseudo-trophoblastic" line of cells to study.


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