Work in Dr. de Mestre's laboratory focuses on understanding the normal processes required to support a healthy pregnancy and delivery of a neonate programmed for lifelong health as well as identifying the pathologies that compromise pregnancy including those that are lethal.

The Equine Pregnancy Laboratory program focuses on unraveling the molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate placental development and function in normal and failing pregnancies that has both immediate implications for fetal survival as well as long term implications for offspring health. Our wider goal is to support evidence based clinical decision making in reproductive medicine through improved strategies to manage equine fertility and welfare of breeding mares. Through collaborative research, we have applied a multidisciplinary approach (molecular and cellular biology, pathology, immunology, genetics and epidemiology) to tackle some of the more difficult questions of pregnancy including identifying key processes that regulate early placental development, novel causes and risk factors of pregnancy loss, and congenital conditions of foals. The mare also provides a unique natural disease model to discover fundamental molecular events of early development that could inform health strategies for pregnancy pathologies in humans and other veterinary species.