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adminSponsored Content by BGI Genomics May 4 2023 Reviewed by Olivia Frost insights from industry Dr. Stephen Lye Interim Director Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health
In this interview, Dr. Stephen Lye, the Interim Director of the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health, talks to NewsMedical about how AI and DNA sequencing can be used for understanding pregnancy complications. Please introduce yourself and your role at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health? What inspired your career – both in science and in maternal health?
My name is Dr. Stephen Lye, and I am the interim director of the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health, which is part of the University of Toronto. My interest in maternal child health can be attributed to when I undertook my post-doctoral training in London, Ontario.
I am originally from Bristol, England, but I moved to Canada to do this post-doctoral training in a hospital setting. The experience of being in a hospital and talking to clinicians as a basic scientist gave me a better understanding of how integral maternal health is to long-term health and well-being. This idea was partly borne of the integration of basic science with clinical practice, which I think is very powerful. As a research area, maternal health can be both underfunded and under-recognized. However, more technologies, such as AI and DNA sequencing, are being used in recent years to understand pregnancy complications further. Why is it so important to continue raising awareness of pregnancy complications?
Something that may not be immediately apparent is that a pregnancy carried to term involves two human beings – the pregnant patient and the baby. The health of the father is also relevant. It is now known that how an individual develops in utero and early infancy plays a critical role in establishing their lifelong health and well-being.
Image Credit: ShutterStock/SeventyFour
If optimal, the pregnancy environment will help that individual to be healthy and reduce the risk of illnesses in later life.
Conversely, suppose that an individual is exposed to risks in utero. In that case, a challenge can be posed to their health trajectories, whether that is because of maternal ill health, such as preeclampsia, or whether the individual is born prematurely.
This can result in a greater risk of non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, as well as a risk to full intellectual development and pose difficulties for that individual to form optimal social relationships.
A research framework termed Developmental Origins of Health and Disease examines these connections.
As a result, science and government have become increasingly interested in the links between maternal health and child health and how, in pre-conception, the parents’ health can impact embryo development, fetal development, and child development in areas like cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Despite this increase in medical advancement, there’s been no reduction in the occurrence of pre-term birth. Why is this, and what impact does pre-term birth have on infants and moms?
The reality is that the diseases of aging adults have garnered increased attention in recent years, whether we are talking about cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or dementia. This increased support could be partly political: older people are at the most risk of those disorders, and it is generally older people working in government funding and setting budgets for healthcare.
The idea of the developmental origins of health and disease is gaining traction. Currently, though, where the funding is based is where researchers are. In this vein, there are far more researchers in cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes than in reproductive health and development issues. Stephen Lye at ICG17 – Understanding Pregnancy Complications with AI and DNA Sequencing Play
There are typically fewer researchers in specific fields like mine, and much greater collaboration is needed to make changes happen.
At my own institution, Sinai Health in Toronto, within the larger institute, where researchers are involved in cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and cardiovascular diseases, we also have an infant health research group. This allows us to connect with those individuals and ensure we can identify some of the cutting-edge science and technologies. You are currently a senior investigator at Sinai Hospital in Canada. Can you tell us a bit more about the laboratory you work in and some of the current research in which you are involved?
The laboratory that I lead focuses on pregnancy complications. We are interested in examining the mechanisms responsible for preeclampsia and pre-term birth. Through this understanding, we seek more efficient and earlier diagnoses of which women are more likely to have those conditions to intervene.
We are also focused on developing interventions or therapeutics that can be applied once we have understood more about the disease. It is vital, in my opinion, to focus not only on mechanisms, therapeutics, or diagnostics but to recognize that these elements are all interwoven. Our group looks at each aspect to try and make a difference.
Image Credit: ShutterStock/Chompoo Suriyo
I am interested in these aspects of science closer to the patient because I tend to enjoy the broader picture. Rather than a career focused on one particular gene or protein and understanding everything I possibly can about that element, my research interest has been more broad.
The broad research aspect allows me to focus on how relationships and correlations happen between different sectors. If I were focused on one specific area, I might not see the connections in the background. I hope this broader approach will allow me to continue benefiting patients.
Most of the diseases and disorders we are interested in are very complex. As such, they are not single-gene or even multiple-gene but have genetic and environmental components and complex natures. Broad thinking must be employed to identify pathways that might be amenable to therapeutics. You are involved in the largest Canadian study of its kind to track the health of women and their babies. What are you hoping to learn from this, and what does this study involve?
We introduced this study to Mount Sinai Hospital, one of the hospitals in Sinai Health. A general hospital, Mount Sinai also has one of the largest reproductive and pregnancy programs in Canada. Our practice is to enroll women when they attend their first obstetrical visit after asking them if they would like to be involved in this study.
If they wish to be involved, the patient will consent to their health information being made accessible to us. When they have a blood sample or another type of sample collected for their routine clinical care, a small sample of the original is banked for research. This way, the study does not involve additional sampling, but the data is derived from their normal care.
Image Credit: ShutterStock/Africa Studio
The only additional requirement is for the patient to complete some detailed questionnaires about their life: their lifestyle, education, home life, economic activity, and past medical history.
We hope to learn more about what factors support a healthy pregnancy through this initiative. The information generated can be passed back to new patients to help them have better outcomes.
Currently, there are close to 4,000 women enrolled in the study. Over the study, we have obtained thousands of blood samples, urine samples, and different biospecimens, and the study is at the stage where we are now following the children born.
We have followed over a thousand children to about four years of age. We examine a range of various aspects of their early development, which provide us with insights into how we can improve pregnancy outcomes as well as how we can improve outcomes for the children. You are currently at ICG, and your earlier presentation was titled ‘RNA Sequence.’ RNA sequence identifies signatures of maternal blood that can predict imminent pre-term birth. Could you outline some of the key takeaways from this presentation?
As mentioned earlier, one of our core aims is to provide better care for women clinically diagnosed with pre-term labor. The condition known as threatened pre-term labor occurs when women start uterine contractions before ‘normal term,’ or 37 weeks of completed pregnancy.
Image Credit: ShutterStock/Pressmaster
When threatened pre-term labor occurs, there is a risk of the baby being born pre-term. Indeed, if the delivery is too early, that baby can die because it is essentially a fetus born into an extrauterine environment. At about 24-25 weeks of pregnancy, which is a little over halfway through, such babies would be about the size of my palm.
Sadly, if born at that gestation period, many of them will die, and others might have significant disabilities that they will experience for the rest of their lives. Related StoriesThe Applications of Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) – 10 Years of ExperienceBGI cares – 2022 social responsibilities in reviewAsk the Expert: 7 Questions about Colorectal Cancer & Non-invasive Fecal DNA Testing
When a clinical diagnosis of pre-term labor is made, it is very difficult for clinicians to know whether a woman experiencing contractions will continue to experience them and go on to deliver within the next couple of days or if the contractions will cease and pregnancy will be maintained onto term. Only about 20% of women diagnosed with pre-term labor actually deliver pre-term.
Suppose the clinician is of the opinion that there is going to be a pre-term birth. In that case, it is firstly essential that the woman is kept in a hospital, hospitalized, or transferred from a community hospital to a hospital that has a neonatal intensive care unit.
This is important since high standards of care and capability are needed for looking after a premature baby, which is costly to the healthcare system. Often, particularly in countries like Canada, which are sparsely populated, this means that women will be transported long distances away from home.
Image Credit: ShutterStock/ALPA PROD
The next step is that the patient will be either treated with drugs to try and stop the labor or given hormones to mature the baby’s organ systems and hopefully allow that baby to survive. If the patient is in real pre-term labor, these methods are all perfectly suitable, but the reality is that 80% of them are not.
We have tried to develop a new test to better identify women that are in real labor and will deliver within the next 48 hours and those that are in forced labor and could instead be sent home.
Threatened pre-term labor is the second largest cause of being hospitalized during pregnancy other than giving birth. This takes up many healthcare resources and can cause women to have treatments they do not necessarily need. Are you hopeful that RNA sequencing could predict imminent pre-term birth? If so, what impact would this have on women, their children, and healthcare?
We had some pulmonary data of gene expression signatures in the blood of women experiencing threatened pre-term labor. These gene expression signatures were predictive of whether women would deliver or not.
cDNA microarrays were old technology deployed before sequencing came in. Its sensitivity and specificity were good, but it was not good enough to turn into a commercial test. When RNA sequencing came in and became cost-effective enough to do on a large scale, it allowed us to conduct the study we did before again and get much more resolution on the gene expression signatures.
Image Credit: ShutterStock/nobeatsofierce
In our current study, we have performed nearly 1000 RNA sequences – RNA sequencing on 1000 samples. This work has increased the sensitivity and specificity of our signatures.
If all the current signatures in new populations can be validated, these can likely be used to develop a commercial test. This project is one that my own hospital jointly funds, BGI, and Genome Canada, which is through a program called the Genomic Applications Partnership Program, our genomics funding agency in Canada.
It is essential to work closely with companies interested in pregnancy. Most companies are afraid of what might happen if a problem occurs, so they steer clear of pregnancy. BGI has had some experience in pregnancy and newborn health due to their newborn screening tests. If we successfully generate a screening test through the research program, this could be introduced into their line of products. Are you hopeful that the field of maternal health will soon see better outcomes with continued research, funding, and innovation? Could increased and improved testing generate better outcomes for pre-term birth? What more needs to be done before this can become a reality?
As an optimist, I would say we strive for and achieve positive outcomes for women. We are also trying to develop a similar type of test that will predict in early pregnancy whether a woman is likely to have a pre-term birth in addition to this screening test in development. In addition, other colleagues are developing the same approach to other pregnancy complications like preeclampsia.
Image Credit: ShutterStock/Petrovich Nataliya
There is a great deal of activity within the pregnancy research field that can improve outcomes, particularly in diagnostics. It is more complicated to introduce a new therapeutic to women during pregnancy than to give a cancer drug where someone is at imminent risk.
Most pregnancies are uneventful and ultimately lead to the birth of a remarkable new human being. For most parents, pregnancy and childbirth are low-risk, high-reward events. For a small number – approximately 10-15% – pregnancy can be more of a rocky road and potentially have a disastrous outcome. Having a baby die in utero or during the newborn period is devastating, and this motivates us toward our goals. As a recognized leader in the field of infant health and maternal reproductive health, what has been your proudest achievement?
When I reflect, the work that springs to mind is how the maternal immune system plays a role throughout pregnancy, which has been very exciting. From this, we have discovered that the interactions between the mothers’ immune cells and the developing placenta are critically important in forming the placenta.
In other words, as is well known, the placenta is the lifeline between the mother and the baby. The birth process also requires maternal immune cells, underlining this form of mutual communication between the mother and the baby throughout the pregnancy, which has been hugely exciting to find out.
Image Credit: ShutterStock/crystal light
The other aspect that has given me the most satisfaction in my career is building groups of scientists, conditions, and investigators that can work well together. Building teams is essential, as I firmly believe that a team will have greater expertise across disciplines. Such multidisciplinary expertise is vital in understanding complex medical issues like pregnancy complications.
The third thing I am proud of is training young scientists who come into my lab as students, several of whom now hold senior positions in their own labs around the world. Those three things – the groundbreaking research we have done, the teams we have built, and the trainees who have furthered their careers in the field – have brought me great fulfillment. What are the next steps for you and your career?
We aim to expand the research and innovation in the pre-term birth area. One element of this is the screening tests that we hope to develop further and lead to commercial products. Thanks to some early-stage therapeutics, there is also the potential to reduce pre-term birth in high-risk women. We are working to move those closer to human clinical studies.
Finally, we also have a large study in four different countries: India, China, South Africa, and Canada. I am mainly involved in the South African study, in which we are looking at interventions that start pre-conception.
Image Credit: ShutterStock/George Rudy
In this study, to see whether we can improve pregnancy health, women are enrolled before they have a baby so that we can follow them through pregnancy and their child’s infancy.
The study also aims to improve women’s health before they get pregnant, allow them to have healthier pregnancies, and enable their children to have better starts in life. Currently, about 24,000 women are being enrolled, which is going to be exciting over the next few years. Omix is VGI’s vision for their company. What does Omix mean to you as a scientist?
My priority is utilizing Omix to improve the lives of individuals, which in our case refers to women during pregnancy and their children during infancy.
The core of the vision is to make these expensive and large-scale technologies more affordable and accessible to more people. Our partnership with BGI takes us some way along that route. Simply having the technical capability without understanding the biology or having access to the patients is not viable, sustainable, or valuable; instead, partnerships are essential, as are collaborations. What are you looking forward to most at the conference, or what have you enjoyed most so far?
I have enjoyed hearing about the science that I am not necessarily familiar with. For instance, we have heard much about metabolomics and meta-genomics and how the microbiome is vital for mental and physical health. It has also been intriguing to learn more about population genomic studies research in the Baltics. This data can also help inform the rest of our work, which is invaluable. About BGI
BGI Genomics is the world's leading integrated solutions provider of precision medicine, now serving customers in more than 100 countries.
They provide academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies, health care providers, and other organizations with integrated genomic sequencing and proteomic services and solutions across a broad range of applications spanning:
They have almost 20 years of genomics experience helping customers achieve their research goals by delivering rapid, high-quality results using a broad array of cost-effective, cutting-edge technologies, including their own innovative DNBSEQ™ sequencing technology.
Sponsored Content Policy: News-Medical.net publishes articles and related content that may be derived from sources where we have existing commercial relationships, provided such content adds value to the core editorial ethos of News-Medical.Net which is to educate and inform site visitors interested in medical research, science, medical devices and treatments.

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Politics
UK and France have ‘shared responsibility’ to tackle illegal migration, Emmanuel Macron says
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3 hours agoon
July 9, 2025By
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Emmanuel Macron has said the UK and France have a “shared responsibility” to tackle the “burden” of illegal migration, as he urged co-operation between London and Paris ahead of a crunch summit later this week.
Addressing parliament in the Palace of Westminster on Tuesday, the French president said the UK-France summit would bring “cooperation and tangible results” regarding the small boats crisis in the Channel.
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Mr Macron – who is the first European leader to make a state visit to the UK since Brexit – told the audience that while migrants’ “hope for a better life elsewhere is legitimate”, “we cannot allow our countries’ rules for taking in people to be flouted and criminal networks to cynically exploit the hopes of so many individuals with so little respect for human life”.
“France and the UK have a shared responsibility to address irregular migration with humanity, solidarity and fairness,” he added.
Looking ahead to the UK-France summit on Thursday, he promised the “best ever cooperation” between France and the UK “to fix today what is a burden for our two countries”.
Sir Keir Starmer will hope to reach a deal with his French counterpart on a “one in, one out” migrant returns deal at the key summit on Thursday.
King Charles also addressed the delegations at a state banquet in Windsor Castle on Tuesday evening, saying the summit would “deepen our alliance and broaden our partnerships still further”.

King Charles speaking at state banquet welcoming Macron.
Sitting next to President Macron, the monarch said: “Our armed forces will cooperate even more closely across the world, including to support Ukraine as we join together in leading a coalition of the willing in defence of liberty and freedom from oppression. In other words, in defence of our shared values.”
In April, British officials confirmed a pilot scheme was being considered to deport migrants who cross the English Channel in exchange for the UK accepting asylum seekers in France with legitimate claims.
The two countries have engaged in talks about a one-for-one swap, enabling undocumented asylum seekers who have reached the UK by small boat to be returned to France.
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Britain would then receive migrants from France who would have a right to be in the UK, like those who already have family settled here.
The small boats crisis is a pressing issue for the prime minister, given that more than 20,000 migrants crossed the English Channel to the UK in the first six months of this year – a rise of almost 50% on the number crossing in 2024.

President Macron greets Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle at his address to parliament in Westminster.
Elsewhere in his speech, the French president addressed Brexit, and said the UK could not “stay on the sidelines” despite its departure from the European Union.
He said European countries had to break away from economic dependence on the US and China.
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“Our two countries are among the oldest sovereign nations in Europe, and sovereignty means a lot to both of us, and everything I referred to was about sovereignty, deciding for ourselves, choosing our technologies, our economy, deciding our diplomacy, and deciding the content we want to share and the ideas we want to share, and the controversies we want to share.
“Even though it is not part of the European Union, the United Kingdom cannot stay on the sidelines because defence and security, competitiveness, democracy – the very core of our identity – are connected across Europe as a continent.”
World
IDF presence in Gaza ‘only issue’ still to be resolved in push for Israel-Hamas ceasefire, Sky News understands
Published
3 hours agoon
July 9, 2025By
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Only one issue remains unresolved in the push to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, according to Sky sources.
Intense negotiations are taking place in Qatar in parallel with key talks in Washington between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Two sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations have told Sky News that disagreement between Israel and Hamas remains on the status and presence of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) inside Gaza.
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Gaza ceasefire deal in progress
The two sides have bridged significant differences on several other issues, including the process of delivering humanitarian aid and Hamas’s demand that the US guarantees to ensure Israel doesn’t unilaterally resume the war when the ceasefire expires in 60 days.
On the issue of humanitarian aid, Sky News understands that a third party that neither Hamas nor Israel has control over will be used in areas from which the IDF withdraws.

Benjamin Netanyahu briefed reporters on Capitol Hill about the talks on Tuesday. Pic: AP
This means that the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – jointly run by an American organisation and Israel – will not be able to operate anywhere where the IDF is not deployed. It will limit GHF expansion plans.
It is believed the United Nations or other recognised humanitarian organisations will adopt a greater role.
On the issue of a US guarantee to prevent Israel restarting the war, Sky News understands that a message was passed to Hamas by Dr Bishara Bahbah, a Palestinian American who has emerged as a key back channel in the negotiations.

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The message appears to have been enough to convince Hamas that President Trump will prevent Israel from restarting the conflict.
However, there is no sense from any of the developments over the course of the past day about what the future of Gaza looks like longer-term.
Final challenge is huge
The last remaining disagreement is, predictably, the trickiest to bridge.
Israel’s central war aim, beyond the return of the hostages, is the total elimination of Hamas as a military and political organisation. The withdrawal of the IDF, partial or total, could allow Hamas to regroup.
One way to overcome this would be to provide wider guarantees of clear deliverable pathways to a viable future for Palestinians.
But there is no sense from the negotiations of any longer-term commitments on this issue.
Two key blocks have been resolved over the past 24 hours but the final challenge is huge.
The conflict in Gaza erupted when Hamas attacked southern Israel in October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures. Some 20 hostages are believed to remain alive in Gaza.
Israel has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
World
Trump applying ‘heavy pressure’ on Netanyahu to end war in Gaza
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3 hours agoon
July 9, 2025By
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US President Donald Trump is putting “heavy” pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza, two sources close to the ceasefire negotiations have told Sky News.
One US source said: “The US pressure on Israel has begun, and tonight it will be heavy.”
The source, who is not authorised to speak publicly, was referring to the White House dinner on Monday night between Trump and Netanyahu.
A second Middle Eastern diplomatic source agreed that the American pressure on Israel would be intense.

Benjamin Netanyahu gave Donald Trump a letter saying he had nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. Pic: AP
Netanyahu arrived in Washington DC in the early hours of Monday morning and held meetings on Monday with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser.
The Israeli prime minister plans to be in Washington until Thursday with meetings on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
Trump has made clear his desire to bring the Gaza conflict to an end.
However, he has never articulated how a lasting peace, which would satisfy both the Israelis and Palestinians, could be achieved.
His varying comments about ownership of Gaza, moving Palestinians out of the territory and permanent resettlement, have presented a confusing policy.
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Over the coming days, we will see the extent to which Trump demands that Netanyahu accepts the current Gaza ceasefire deal, even if it falls short of Israel’s war aims – the elimination of Hamas.
The strategic objective to permanently remove Hamas seems always to have been impossible. Hamas as an entity was the extreme consequence of the Israeli occupation.
The Palestinians’ challenge has not gone away, and the situation for Palestinians now is worse than it has ever been in Gaza and also the West Bank. It is not clear how Trump plans to square that circle.
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Trump’s oft-repeated desire to “stop the killing” is sincere. Those close to him often emphasise this. He is also looking to cement his legacy as a peacemaker. He genuinely craves the Nobel Peace Prize.
In this context, the complexities of conflicts – in Ukraine or Gaza – are often of secondary importance to the president.
If Netanyahu can be persuaded to end the war, what would he need?
The hostages back – for sure. That would require agreement from Hamas. They would only agree to this if they have guarantees on Gaza’s future and their own future. More circles to square.
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The Monday night dinner could have been a key moment for the Middle East. Two powerful men in the Blue Room of the White House, deciding the direction of the region.
Will it be seen as the moment the region was remoulded? But to whose benefit?
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Trump makes decisions instinctively. He can shift position quickly and often listens to the last person in the room. Right now – that person is Netanyahu.
Gaza is one part of a jigsaw of challenges, which could become opportunities.
Diplomatic normalisation between Israel and the Arab world is a prize for Trump and could genuinely secure him the Nobel Peace Prize.
But without the Gaza piece, the jigsaw is incomplete.
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