Elucidation and Validation of the role of Transporters in the Placenta, Lactating Mammary Gland, Developing Gut, and Blood Brain Barrier

The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development seeks to advance its mission of supporting maternal, fetal, and child health by continuing to enhance the understanding of maternal, fetal, and child exposure to nutrients, metabolites, medications, supplements, microbiome-derived products, and environmental chemicals. This will be done by supporting a second phase of the Transporter Elucidation Network (TEN). This phase of the TEN will establish perinatal multi-barrier transport network frameworks to clarify how transporters and local biotransformation regulate these processes. Building on prior organ-focused models, methods, and datasets, this initiative will develop   standards, resources, models, and prototype multi-compartment approaches spanning maternal gut, placenta, lactating mammary epithelium, infant gut, and infant blood-brain barrier. The initiative is expected to support a mechanistic understanding of  transporter function, polarity, kinetics, and transformation capacity relevant to pregnancy, lactation, infant nutrition, pediatric pharmacology, and neurodevelopment. By emphasizing multi-barrier perinatal transporter frameworks this phase of the TEN will provide community resources for future integrated studies of perinatal exposure, risk, and intervention across interlinked maternal, fetal, and infant systems. It will also strengthen coordination among investigators, accelerate dissemination of tools, and advance human-based, developmentally relevant transporter research and workforce development. The grant authority for this is 42 U.S.C. § 241