Improving trust and sharing of immune test data from pregnancy and infant studies
A quality control pipeline for enhancing reproducibility of immunology studies with shared data
This project builds and expands software that checks and cleans immune lab data from mothers and babies so shared results are more reliable for researchers.
Quick facts
| Grant type | NIH-funded research |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | University of Maryland Baltimore NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Baltimore, United States) |
| Project ID | NIH-11342321 on NIH RePORTER |
What this research studies
The team will expand their existing Interactive Serology Plate Inspector (I‑SPI) software to cover more types of immune lab assays commonly stored in the ImmPort data repository. They will work with ImmPort to add fields for quality-related metadata and run existing datasets through the QC pipelines to tag and populate those fields. The work uses data from human pregnancy and infant cohorts already collected by the MADI program and follows FAIR data practices to make results easier to find, understand, and reuse. The goal is to make shared immunology data more reproducible and trustworthy for future research.
Who could benefit from this research
Good fit: This is most relevant to pregnant people and infants who are enrolled in maternal immunization or infant immunity research cohorts and whose lab samples or results are stored in research databases.
Not a fit: People who are not part of maternal or infant immunity studies or who have no stored lab data are unlikely to be directly involved or to see immediate benefit.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this could make research findings from maternal and infant immunity more reliable and speed progress toward safer vaccines and treatments for mothers and babies.
How similar studies have performed: Quality-control tools for lab data have shown value in other areas and earlier versions of I‑SPI have been used, but applying comprehensive QC across many immunology assay types in ImmPort is relatively new.
Where this research is happening
Baltimore, United States
- University of Maryland Baltimore — Baltimore, United States (Active)
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Pasetti, Marcela F — University of Maryland Baltimore
- Study coordinator: Pasetti, Marcela F
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page below.