Study Design
The overall sample allocation, hypothesis generation, biomarker
discovery, independent validation, and panel construction workflows are
illustrated in Fig. 1. Our study was conducted in three phases: (1) the
discovery phase, which included both in-silico expression analysis of PE
and non-PE placentas and comprehensive literature mining to generated
the hypothesis that Lep and Cer might be implicated in PE
pathophysiology as potential biomarkers; (2) the testing phase, which
measured the levels of Lep and Cer in a case-control cohort of PE and
non-PE maternal sera sampled at confirmative diagnosis; (3) the
validation phase, which determined the levels of Lep and Cer in an
independent longitudinal cohort of PE and non-PE maternal sera sampled
at different gestational ages.