Global transcriptional profiling confirmed failed decidualization of human Endometrial Stromal Cells (hESCs) obtained from non-pregnant women with a previous pregnancy complicated by severe preeclampsia (sPE).. Homo sapiens

The data presented here suggested that sPE is associated with impaired decidualization. Initial experiments involved an in vitro approach. hESCs were isolated from patients who developed sPE in a previous pregnancy or control women who had normal obstetric outcomes. Function was tested by comparing the ability of hESCs in the two groups to decidualize in culture. By morphological criteria and marker expression (PRL and IGFBP1), the cells in the formerly sPE group were decidualization resistant, which was confirmed by microarray analyses showing that they were transcriptionally inert. Overall design: Decidualized and non-decidualized hESCs from donors who had sPE (n=5) or normal pregnancies (n=7) were collected after 5 days in culture and total RNA was extracted into Trizol according to the manufacturer's instructions (Life Technologies). The RNA quality was assessed by using an RNA LabChip and an A2100 Bioanalyzer (Agilent Technologies). Samples with an RNA integrity >7 were selected for microarray analyses. Sample preparation and hybridization was accomplished using Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer technology according to the manufacturer's guidelines. Hybridized microarrays were imaged with an Axon 4100A scanner (Molecular Devices) and the data were extracted with the GenePix Pro 6.0 software (Molecular Devices).