Foundation for innovation
in Cardiometabolism and Nutrition

Portrait of young researchers: Dounia FARHI

Exploring the impact of maternal obesity on children’s hearts

UMR 1166 – Team 3: Cellular and molecular plasticity in cardiovascular diseases – Dr. Elise BALSE

2024: Best Poster Award, Physiology, Therapeutic Pathophysiology (ED394- P2T)
2023: Winner of the Jeanne Philippe Béziat Cardiology Prize, French Medical Research Foundation (FRM)

Passionate about biology and human physiology, Dounia earned a bachelor's degree in Biology and Health from the University of Paris-Est Créteil, followed by a master's degree in Human Physiology and Physiopathology from Sorbonne University.
From an early age, she was fascinated by the cardiovascular system, particularly its adaptation to physiopathological constraints.
During her end-of-studies internship in Dr. Elise Balse's team, she discovered a strong interest in cardiac biology, particularly postnatal cardiac development, a field that is still relatively unexplored but crucial to understanding cardiac alterations.
Since November 2023, Dounia has been pursuing a PhD at IHU ICAN in the same team. Her research focuses on the impact of maternal obesity on postnatal cardiac development, with the aim of elucidating the mechanisms involved and identifying potential therapeutic approaches.

The Ob-mat project aims to study the consequences of maternal obesity on postnatal cardiac development and organization.
Obesity is a major public health problem, and its growing prevalence contributes to an increase in the incidence of cardiovascular disease. The obesity epidemic affects pregnant women, and the uterine environment affects organ development. In particular, children of obese mothers have higher rates of cardiovascular events and mortality.
However, the impact of early dysmetabolism on postnatal cardiac development and its repercussions on the mechanical and electrical functions of the heart is very poorly understood.
Dounia's work consists specifically of studying the effects of maternal obesity on the functional, structural, transcriptional, and metabolic levels during postnatal cardiac development.
Its ultimate goal is to characterize the pathways affected by maternal dysmetabolism during development and to identify biomarkers that can explain the cardiac alterations, particularly heart failure, observed in the human population.