Transplacental Passage of a Human Relaxin Administered to Rhesus Monkeys

A synthetic version of the human relaxin encoded by the human gene 2 (hR1x-2) was administered to pregnant rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) on gestational days 141-158. Monkeys (three per group) received doses of 100 micrograms/kg or 2000 micrograms/kg as a continuous i.v. infusion over 2 h into a radial vein. One monkey in the low-dose group received, along with the unlabelled hR1x-2, 25.5 microCi/kg of the test material internally labelled with [35S]cysteine. Immunoreactive hR1x-2, as measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, appeared in all fetuses within 30 min (the first sampling time) of beginning the infusions. Peak fetal plasma levels of hR1x-2 were only 0.8-1.5% of the maternal values. Only 8-15% of the fetal serum radioactivity was hR1x-2. Radioactivity from maternal urine pooled over the 4-h experiment did not elute at the volume corresponding to hR1x-2, but near the column volume.