A Conversation with Sascha Drewlo

I t was while working as a postdoc in Germany tracking proteins and RNA in cells that molecular biologist Sascha Drewlo first became fascinated by the placenta, the organ that supports a developing fetus. In 2007, he went to Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto to work with John Kingdom, an obstetrician who treated high-risk pregnancies and ran a medical center focused on studying and treating placental complications. Now at Wayne State University, Drewlo uses genomics to study placental cells, which carry the same DNA as the fetus. In November, he and his colleagues reported that embryos and fetuses can be genotyped as early as 5 weeks into gestation using cells collected from the mother’s cervical canal by a Pap smear. Erika Gebel Berg spoke to him about how this method might be a safer way to do early genetic testing for birth defects and to predict pregnancy complications.