Protecting the Developing Brain from Prenatal Stress Source: Justin Paget/Getty Images February 1, 2021 Share Researchers from the University of Iowa (UI) and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center report that offspring can be protected from the effects of prenatal stress by administering a neuroprotective compound during pregnancy. The team published its study “Maternal P7C3-A20 Treatment Protects Offspring from Neuropsychiatric Sequelae of Prenatal Stress” in Antioxidants & Redox Signaling. Working in a mouse model, Rachel Schroeder, a student in the UI Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Neuroscience, drew a connection between the work of her two mentors, Hanna Stevens, MD, PhD, UI associate professor of psychiatry and Ida P. Haller Chair of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Andrew A. Pieper, MD, PhD, a former UI faculty member. Pieper is now Morley-Mather Chair of Neuropsychiatry at Case Western Reserve University and Investigator and Director of the Neurotherapeutics Center at the Harrington Discovery Institute, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center.