Investigating the pathways to a successful pregnancy
The beginning of a new life is medically complex. Between fertilisation and birth, fertilised eggs undergo numerous biological processes that still pose unanswered questions today. Dr Janice Jeschke's work focuses on the underlying mechanisms necessary for a successful pregnancy, spanning both clinical practice and laboratory settings. As a so-called clinician scientist, she works at the Centre for Reproductive Medicine and Andrology (CeRA) in the research group led by Prof. Dr Verena Nordhoff and is also a resident physician in the Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics at Münster University Hospital.
In concrete terms, this dual career path means that Janice Jeschke spends 50 per cent of her working time in the clinic and 50 per cent at CeRA. “I spend four weeks working in the operating room, in the delivery room, or providing care for inpatients and outpatients,” she explains. In the four weeks that follow, she focuses on her research. To systematically strengthen this form of translational research, the “Junior Scientist Research Centre ReproTrack.MS”, funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, was established in 2023. It offers researchers from medicine and the natural sciences a structured, interdisciplinary and interactive training programme to support careers as independent scientists. Janice Jeschke is part of this network and experiences its benefits on a daily basis. “The close exchange saves time,” she says, “because clinical experience helps to ask the right questions early on and avoid dead ends.”
As a postdoctoral researcher, she studies the molecular mechanisms that influence fertilisation and implantation of the egg in the uterus lining. During her doctoral research, she investigated the influence of steroid hormones on ion channels in human sperm. Today, she analyses early biological developmental processes that are crucial for pregnancy, in particular through new approaches to assess the developmental potential of individual eggs and the embryos that result from them. The aim is to better understand infertility and, on that basis, to develop new diagnostic approaches and therapies. In her basic research, she works exclusively with human samples that arise in routine clinical practice and are usually discarded —of course, only with prior consent from the patients.
Even though research often begins years before clinical application, the exchange between practice and science starts early and in very concrete terms. Clinical observations thus feed directly into research planning. If, for example, physicians observe that implantation repeatedly fails in certain patients despite favourable conditions, Janice Jeschke addresses this question in her experimental work. She explores the molecular processes that may be involved in the early stages of implantation. In turn, her discoveries enhance our understanding of clinical observations and facilitate the implementation of novel diagnostic markers.
In the end, there is often the long-awaited moment: a positive pregnancy test. For expectant parents, it means hope and relief. For Janice Jeschke, it confirms that the close integration of laboratory and clinic makes a difference. It is precisely where research and medical practice come together that translational research becomes tangible.
Author: Kathrin Kottke
This article is part of a thematic page on translational research and was published in the university newspaper wissen|leben, No. 1, 4 February 2026.