Developing Methods for Perinatal Health ScreeningdissertationsPiserchia, JennifercreatorTripathi, AnubhavAdvisorWessel, GaryReaderRaimondo, TheresaReaderBrown University. Biology and Medicine: Biomedical Engineeringsponsor20249, 45 p.born digitalThesis (Sc. M.)--Brown University, 2024thesesScreening for maternal and prenatal health conditions allows for better patient care and improved health outcomes. In maternal health, hypertensive conditions like preeclampsia, which leads to an increased risk for a number of fatal complications, lack specific and sensitive screening tools. In fetal health, chromosomal abnormalities are a primary concern during development, but standard diagnostic test methods carry a risk of miscarriage, therefore there is a need for a noninvasive screening method for aneuploidy. In response to the need for new screening tools for preeclampsia and aneuploidy, two perinatal screening methods were developed: a dual-bead based assay to screen for preeclampsia and an automated capillary electropherogram based assay to screen for aneuploidy. The dual-bead assay relies on an antibody-carbohydrate sandwich used to capture sFlt-1, a protein biomarker for preeclampsia, for detection using qPCR. The aneuploidy screening method uses modified cfDNA and probes to bind DNA fragments for a non-quantitative, size based detection of aneuploidy. Experiments were unable to be executed for the preeclampsia study, but expected results are detailed. For the aneuploidy study, a series of experiments were performed to optimize a double DNA hybridization using model cfDNA and DNA probes. Results showed that preparing samples with a pH of 6 is optimal for hybridization. Future work should be done at a higher sample size to verify these results. A novel method to screen for aneuploidy in a non-invasive and non-quantitative way is presented.Perinatal HealthPreeclampsiaBiochemical markersdiagnosticsAneuploidyGenetic screeningNIPTNIPSDiagnosis, NoninvasiveBiological assayEnglishRPB20240502