Ethical issues prevent collection of appropriate control tissues in studies of human spontaneous preterm birth (sPTB).
Gestational age (GA) controls from closely related species allow for the identification of human sPTB- and GA-specific genes.
We compared transcriptomes from human preterm, human term, and healthy GA-matched macaque placentas.
Our novel, comparative approach identified 29 sPTB- and 37 GA-specific genes as promising candidates for future research.