Welcome Jump and Medicines360 launched a partnership last week that aims to accelerate maternal health tools globally.
San Diego-based Wellcome Leap helps create and fund programs to improve human health. Meanwhile, San Francisco-based Medicines360 is an innovation organization that helps develop and launch products for women.
Through the partnership, the organizations will develop blood tests and non-invasive ocular imaging tools to better predict the risk of common pregnancy complications linked to approximately half of all stillbirths. It builds on advances designed in Wellcome Leap’s In Utero program, a $50 million initiative launched in 2022. Technologies developed in this program include:
- Blood Biomarkers of Fetal Growth Restriction, Gestational Diabetes Mellitus and Preeclampsia from the University of Cambridge
- The University of Edinburgh’s retinal eye imaging technology, which aims to detect blood vessel-related conditions such as pre-eclampsia.
Medicines360 will lead the development of these products and will also test them in a clinical trial starting this summer. The diagnoses will be tested in first-time pregnancies (which is when there are greater risks) over three trimesters.
“The ultimate goal is to develop diagnostic tests that can be widely implemented, that is, not in very sophisticated analytical systems that cost a lot and are available in more sophisticated laboratories,” Dr. Andrea Olariu, CEO of Medicines360, said in an interview. “Our goal is really to develop tests that can be deployed in rural areas, and we’ll start with the UK and the US, but then the goal is to expand globally and make this test available in low- and middle-income countries as well.”
She added that this will help close gaps in access to maternal health, balance medical interventions such as cesarean sections, and improve early detection of complications and continuous monitoring throughout pregnancy.
Throughout the world, more than 2 million pregnancies end in stillbirth every year. And more than one in 150 births end in stillbirth in the U.S. About 30% of stillbirths occur in pregnancies without identifiable risk factors, according to an October 2025 study JAMA study. Low-income families are especially at risk. This is what the association hopes to change.
“Before you finish this paragraph, another baby will be stillborn. Every 16 seconds, a mother, a family, mourns this loss. Women deserve clearer information about the health of their pregnancy,” Regina E. Dugan, CEO of Wellcome Leap, said in a statement. “By combining Wellcome Leap’s scientific advances with Medicines360’s global access and innovation model, we can offer predictive tools to mothers around the world, before complications arise. Before it is too late.”
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