SuppliedDavid Olson has spent much of his 40-year career trying to improve the health of pregnant women, their fetuses, and their newborns. For his excellence in teaching, research, and service to the University of Alberta, Olson was named a 2023 U of A Distinguished Professor.
Olson, a professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology, said he was both “elated and humbled” to receive an Award for Faculty Excellence.
“The award reflects so many years of my work as a professor. But, it also reflects the work that has come out of my laboratory and the hundreds of people who have worked here over the years. So it’s a cumulative group award,” Olson said.
Olson has studied factors that influence term and pre-term birth. His interest in pregnancy health began as an undergraduate. After finishing his PhD at Saint Louis University, he chose to do his post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Western Ontario.
“The whole field is called perinatal physiology. That’s what I’ve been studying for my entire career.”
“Nobody had ever systematically followed” how stress contributes to pre-term birth, Olson says.
Around 18 years ago, Olson began studying stress as one of the factors contributing to pre-term birth. Although stress has long-been assumed to be a factor, “nobody had ever systematically followed it or began to study its mechanisms,” Olson said.
Along with Gerlinde Metz, a professor in the department of neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge, Olson began effecting pregnant rats with stress. But the team hit a snag when very few of the stressed rats delivered early. As a result, they had to pivot their research. Olson remembered a lecture he had once attended, and this led him in a new direction.
“I remembered a lecture I had once heard, saying that the daughters of stressed women had more pre-term births than their mothers did.”
The descendants of the original stressed rats did in fact deliver early. Olson said the mother rats passed on their psychological stress to their daughters. As well, because of their stress, the mother rats couldn’t properly care for their daughters. This resulted in a higher lifelong burden of stress for the daughters, called the allostatic load.
“Ultimately, if a person’s allostatic load gets so high that it exceeds their ability to be resilient, then they’re at risk for a bad health outcome. So in a pregnant animal or woman, a high allostatic load could [result in] pre-term birth. In a man like me at my age, it could be something like heart disease or cancer.”
Livmor Biosciences and Maternica Therapeutics intended to encourage investment in women’s health
During his career, Olson founded two companies. He founded Livmor Biosciences in 2012, and co-founded Maternica Therapeutics in 2019. Maternica Therapeutics commercializes therapeutics that can block pre-term birth. To Olson, the purpose of these companies is not just to promote products for pregnancy health. It’s to encourage investment in a health area where the funding has been “extremely low.”
“Pre-term birth is so important because it’s the number one killer of children under the age of five. And other [pre-term] babies that survive have a high risk for lifelong disabilities, cognitive impairment, and loss of potential,” Olson said. “The problem is enormous. Women contribute to 51 per cent of the population. And yet, the investment in women’s health in general and in women’s drugs is phenomenally poor.”
One of the most rewarding parts of Olson’s career has been the people he’s worked with in his laboratory.
“They’re really dedicated and smart. I just love seeing them being successful and progressing in their careers. I am just very proud of all of them.”
If Olson stays in his current position, he will receive $20,000 a year during the “first and any second term” for up to five years. He can used the funds for any approved research or creative scholarly activities.
Olson will use the funds from the award towards publishing papers produced by him and his students. Some journals cost as much as $7,000 to publish in, Olson said.
“It’s very important for our students and their career progression to publish. This will help our students advance their careers.”
