08/15/2025
NEWS: OU's Biorepository Expands to Advance Neonatal Health
Pregnant women with chronic conditions like obesity and diabetes face a significantly higher risk of delivering preterm babies. These babies, especially those born very early, often experience serious health complications at birth – many of which can persist into adulthood, creating a cycle of poor health that can be difficult to interrupt.
To address some of the most complex questions in neonatal medicine, the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences established the Oklahoma Preterm Infant Biorepository, called HEROES. The biorepository is home to an ever-growing collection of biospecimens and clinical data from prematurely born infants and their mothers.
With its next phase of growth, the biorepository will evolve into HEROES-X. This expansion will broaden enrollment beyond very preterm infants (those born at 22-32 weeks) to include late preterm (33-37 weeks) and full-term births, creating a comprehensive developmental continuum. HEROES-X will incorporate body composition analysis, human milk macronutrient profiling and detailed maternal health metrics (body mass index, gestational weight gain, chronic conditions) to elucidate how early-life growth patterns shape long-term health outcomes.
“Thus far, we’ve enrolled nearly 77 mothers and babies and collected more than 1,500 samples,” said Hala Chaaban, M.D., a professor of neonatal-perinatal medicine at the OU College of Medicine and physician at Oklahoma Children's Hospital OU Health. “Our goal is to reach 250 participants as we work to better understand why some babies develop conditions like necrotizing enterocolitis, retinopathy of prematurity and lung disease. We aim to identify biomarkers and risk factors that will enable us to test and intervene early for babies most at risk.”
