Sarah Wernimont, MD, PhD

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.