Fellow

Jane Norman is Professor of Maternal and Fetal Health at the University of Edinburgh. In the early 1990’s she showed that the combination of mifepristone and misoprostol amplifies uterine contractions, which led to the development of the first safe and effective oral abortifacient. Her clinical trials of drugs for preterm labour showed that progesterone is not effective, which has altered global practice. She discovered expression of nitric oxide synthase in the human uterus and established its role in cervical ripening. More recently she uncovered inflammatory infiltration of the uterus at parturition, leading to her intriguing hypothesis that preterm labour reflects an exaggerated inflammatory state.