Sarah Wernimont

,

Credentials

MD, PhD

Bio

Dr. Wernimont received her MD and PhD as part of the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. For her PhD, she studied basic mechanisms of T cell activation. Afterwards, she completed her residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology and fellowship in Maternal-Fetal Medicine at the University of Iowa, as part of their Physician Scientist Training Program. Dr. Wernimont joined the University of Minnesota in 2020 and her research is currently funded through the NIH Reproductive Scientist Development Program. In addition to caring for patients with complicated pregnancies, she has a strong research interest in improving care delivery for pregnant patients with diabetes and fetal growth abnormalities.

Research Summary

Dr. Wernimont’s research interests are directed towards improving outcomes for people with pregnancies complicated by diabetes and obesity. In her clinical research, she has worked to develop
and identify better ways to deliver care for patients with diabetes in pregnancy. Towards this end, she recently created the University of Minnesota Obstetric Measures (UMOMs) database that includes over
70,000 patients and 100,000 deliveries from the MHealth/Fairview System. She has used this database to examine timing of delivery in pregnancies complicated by diabetes and how providers define “poor
glucose control.” She is currently leading a multi-department effort to establish a biorepository for systematic collection of maternal, placental, and neonatal samples to support translational research across the perinatal spectrum at the University of Minnesota to link with clinical data within the UMOMs database. The resulting biorepository is termed UMOM:GOPHER (University of Minnesota Obstetric Measures--Gestational Outcomes and Pediatric HEalth Repository). In her basic science, Dr. Wernimont studies how the maternal nutritional-metabolic environment impacts placental development, function and long-term health outcomes. Using both human placental specimens and trophoblast cell lines, Dr. Wernimont combines cutting edge metabolomics and transcriptomics to define the mechanisms by which changes in nutrient availability impact trophoblast differentiation. The long term goal of this work is to develop novel strategies to improve pregnancy health and childhood outcomes in pregnancies complicated by diabetes.

Clinical Summary

Clinical interests:
Diabetes and obesity in pregnancy; Fetal Growth Abnormalities