Stunning finding: a hormone that dramatically strengthens bones (in mice). Hormone is prominent in lactating mice, but works also in male mice! Score one more for how a women's health focus is a rising tide that lifts all boats.
The path to solving problems in endometriosis is asking MIT undergraduates to solve part of the problem for a grade. They always want the top grade. Sophomore design class
Honored to be chosen for upgrading the neighborhood of endometrial organoids to include stromal cells and vasculature, in synthetic ECM, building on the 2017 papers by Turco et al and Boretto et al
Endometriosis - Science & Life (with a little detour into the human ear on the back of the mouse...). Interview on NPR Fresh Air with Terry Gross TOMORROW ! (2 pm Thursday, Boston & ATL)
Huge congrats to Mikki Tal
@ImmunoFever
for her promotion today to Principal Scientist @ MIT in Biological Engineering! We are so lucky to have her here, leading the charge in Lyme research, and so many other things. Full speed ahead!
Gorgeous picture of an endometrial gland to start your day courtesy
@JuanGnecco4
. Did you know that there are ~20x times more papers about Crohn's disease (afflicts ~1% of the US pop) than adenomyosis (endometrium in the myometrium, afflicts ~2-5% of US pop). Crazy, right?!
My friend made me a portable uterus to kick off the Moonshot for Menstruation Science! Sand-filled, so I can gently bop those who say endometriosis / adenomyosis are benign.
Yes, a substantial fraction of people - more females than males - have pre-formed PEG antibodies; we are still learning what this means for efficacy of therapeutics with PEGylated components.
Not just this month, but every day, do I celebrate the impact of Manu Platt on my research program, beyond his postdoc papers: the example he lives, of joy in science, and spending time on the right problems. He inspired/s my gynecology life, then and now...forever grateful!
We celebrate
#BlackHistoryMonth
by recognizing Georgia Tech professor Manu Platt, who studies how cells sense, respond and remodel their immediate environments for repair and regeneration in health and disease, and translates that knowledge to address global health disparities
In the exhausting war for fertility rights, the battle I choose is for perfect gynecological health. No woman should suffer the agony of IVF. While the political battle rages, join me to create support for "Menstruation Science" - the path to ultimate victory. Mars shot, now!
Excellent update on the state of endometriosis research by
@clarewhatson
- thank you for keeping the spotlight on! One correction - Endo is not only a disease of people who menstruate, but also those who don't...post-Hx Endo is VERY real, and awful...
Thank you to all the MIT students and colleagues who made the process of creating Biological Engineering
@MIT
a grand adventure, and especially to the students who are now out changing the world in so many creative and wonderful ways.
Friday night lab fun: Duncan and Allison run the maiden voyage of the EndoChip, the platform for hosting microvascularized endometriosis lesions during simulated menstrual cycles, for evaluating their responses to hormones and drugs. Perfect! Let's crush endometriosis!
A landmark conference, mandated by Congress, to address the NIH funding gaps in women's health. This Wednesday, Oct 20. The 3:30 pm talk will propose investment in gynecology as a way to infuse all of NIH with Biological Engineering approaches....
Hooray for MIT Technology Review for featuring the potential of endometrial organoids to model disease - and for interviewing so many young investigators doing the actual hands-on work and creating the future of this field
@JuanGnecco4
And....if you want to learn more about the science, about clinical studies, about genetic studies....anything practical about endometriosis for the lay audience...start with the NPR Fresh Air podcast, and sign up for the MIT CGR email on our website
Hugely proud of former postdoc Shelley Peyton, whose energy is offscale and vision brilliant - looking forward to continued excellence and growth of a great department with her leadership.
We're excited to share that Shelly Peyton has been appointed Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering (
@tuftsbme
) starting July 1, 2024. Learn more about her knowledge and expertise in the fields of biomaterials and cancer bioengineering at .
Joyful news!! NIH is establishing an NIH-wide bioeng. center + they recruited a superb leader, Manu Platt
@DrPlattLab
. He is a pioneer in integrating the entire spectrum of molecular life sciences, devices, imaging, computation for tough diseases .
Congrats to my MIT BE had student for winning Best Science Poster Award at the World Congress on Endometriosis! Defended the lab title won by Christi Cook last time in Vancouver!
#wce2023
@gradydoctor
@TuskegeeUniv
Inspiring story! What a great (and wise) dad you had. Never underestimate the joy of learning and using math. A universal language of love and hope for those who study and share it. Bonds made over math endure lifelong. He will always remember your dad.
The greatest joy is seeing the next generation succeed independently. For patients everywhere, this is big, happy news - bravo, Gnecco lab! Good things on the horizon!
I am beyond excited to announce that I will be joining the Tufts University community this fall as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. 🐘The Gnecco Lab will focus on utilizing tissue engineering approaches to understand women's reproductive health.
Am I dreaming? No, this is real! In these craaaaazy times, extraordinarily good news pokes its head out now and then - The time has come for that Moonshot for Menstruation Science to have its day in the sun!
Be still my heart -
@sabraklein1998
revealed a magnificent surprise at the end of her brilliant SeXX and Immunity Series talk @ MIT yesterday: new GRC on Sex Differences in Immunity, April 2023 (Ventura)!
Good news from MIT ChE - Prof Kris Prather will be a fantastic Dept Head, she is known world-wide for her research but at MIT, also for being a superb teacher (MacVicar Fellow!) and colleague.
Congrats to
@JuanGnecco4
and our collaborators for publication of our guide to building the endometrium using a completely synthetic replacement for Matrigel. For a short time, the download is free!
Stunning work by my MIT colleague Regina Barzilay, in detecting breast cancer early. Prime example of how to be an activist to improve the lives of women - roll up your sleeves, and fix the problems yourself. No marching needed :)
From Jamaica to MIT and now off to Stanford leaving me with tears and a gorgeous rendition of the uterus. Desmond Edwards leaves a tremendous legacy at MIT. And his star is just ascending. Bittersweet goodbye to an amazing student.
In addition to limiting hours to ending @ 5 pm, we (MIT BE) started a tradition of providing child care (big kiddie party) at the annual faculty dinner...parents enjoy the evening.. children could see who mom & dad work with, make friends, and leave a legacy of glitter :)
This is not my experience at MIT. My latest recurring meeting ends at 5:30 pm. I don't have any recurring weekend meetings. My department
@MITChemE
supports its parents thru time & finances. Excellent research, brilliant students, massive support. To me, "This is MIT."
I get emails of gratitude/and or desperation from endometriosis patients every day. When I hold the lab to "the devil is in the details" standards, sometimes to grumbling, I am thinking of the tax dollars we get from those patients- we owe them hard work toward a cure.
My fervent Mother's Day prayer: that MIT will support launch of a "Moonshot for Menstruation Science" this year, elevating gynecology research from a backwater to the new cool thing. And that
@elonmusk
will turn it into a "Mars shot". C'mon, MIT! This is your year to be
Super fun science day with visit by
@KaraSpillerLab
, superb real-world seminar and inspiration for taming the wiley macrophage, especially in humans, to heal wounds, diagnose what the heck is happening in them, stop endometriosis, and more. Thank you, Kara!
NIH is having a 2-day workshop to address "women in STEM" issues. And still - no RCDC code for adenomyosis! And nothing on the agenda related to the funding gaps in women's health. Elephant in the room, people! HERD of elephants! SMH!
Endometriosis meets its match in Edinburgh, a hub for innovation in thinking and doing. Great news about the advancing clinical trial for non-hormonal therapy by
@horne_research
and his colleagues
@p_saunder
New drug offers promising breakthrough for endometriosis patients.
A clinical trial for a drug typically used to treat metabolic diseases in children is moving into its second phase.
@maeve_cullinan
has the latest.
I cannot praise
@ImmunoFever
enough for taking her machete to the thorny questions of sex differences in Immunity, especially Lyme and other chronic diseases. Huge thanks to Emily and Malcolm Fairbairn for believing in her (and us).
The joy of teaching at MIT - seeing your former undergraduate advisee compete in the Olympics! She moved heaven and earth to get her credits in while training in South America most of the winter - with awe-inspiring dedication.
What will ARPA-H spend $100M on to speed solutions to women's health problems? It was inspiring to spend the day with creative wise entrepreneurs, academics, and patient advocates to come up with the slate of problems needing solutions.
Endometriosis/ endometrium -omics, pain mechanisms, and more at our first ever Gynecology Research and Development Workshop at MIT on Sept 22 (virtual option). We have an amazing line up and there will be focus on future challenges!
Very excited to be joining a superb community of Lyme disease researchers, thanks to the vision and generosity of the MIT alumni family. A fantastic opportunity to illuminate both the broad mysteries of Lyme, and the question of why chronic Lyme skews female.
The question burning in my brain night and day is how the endometrial epithelial cells get into smooth muscle and form such beautifully polarized hollow lumen structures. Here, in the myometrium -
@EpiMechFC
I really need your help. Postdoc open!
Women's health has a forceful new advocate
@NIH
- he walks the walk. He bravely started
@DrPlattLab
working on sickle cell & - endometriosis! Low funding but HUGE societal need. His joyful outlook on helping others inspired my MIT CGR work. Still celebrating this!
Lyme disease makes its debut at the Microphysiological Systems World Summit, Seattle. Yes, TLR1 polymorphism has an effect in our vascularized Borrelia infection model….and yes, you should be worried about ticks!
@ImmunoFever
will agree
Menstruation Science! Who is interested in helping with a symposium/workshop for Feb 2024, with Hilary Critchley as lead speaker?! She will be here during part of her sabbatical! Email me or reply! (Pic of when we first met, in Florence @ SEUD!)
Launching the MIT Moonshot for Menstruation Science with an incredible guest on Feb 22 @ 4 pm- Prof Hilary Critchley! She arrives tomorrow for a short sabbatical - ping me if you want a zoom for the talk or to meet with her!
MIT Biological Engineering Seniors win Audience Choice Award for their design project on treating menstrual cramps - amazing creativity, amazing team, next stop a start-up (I hope). And THEY dreamed up the application when assigned "personal care" by the prof. Hooray!
Thank you for the shout out Prof. Peyton! I remember writing one of your postdoc papers when I was recovering from one of the surgeries....good thing you were a good sport (and still are).
3 MIT Postdoc positions in Immune-Tissue Interactions in Physiomimetic Systems - Microfluidics, tissue engineering, immunology, infection, with Griffith/Lauffenburger/Bryson/Trumper/Kamm lab collaboration
With creativity and hard work, and collaboration with
@ImmunoFever
, the lab capped off 2022 with the first experiments of Borrelia (Lyme) interactions (purple) with 3D human microvessels (green). Stay tuned for 3D infection in endometrium and gut in 2023!
Science is like mosaic art - everyone puts in their tiles and a beautiful picture emerges. Make your tiles special - detailed and gorgeous. Trust that others are doing the same, so that the full picture emerges, to everyone's delight.
I love that The Spouse is so deeply involved in pregnancy immunology. He makes sense of the data, in the most beautiful way. 27 years and I never tire of his insights into biology, from his brilliant applied math perspective. He cares about the biology - and makes it real.
Doug Lauffenberger (below) and Boris Juelg spoke about their work in the
#MOMi
group. Lauffenberger talked about math tools to bring "the greatest insight out of the data." Juelg talked about the
#covid19
vaccination of pregnant women and placental transfer of immunity.
She is happy that she created a mucosal barrier engineering protocol so robust that even the advisor can implement it on the first try. (No lab coat as it was mock with no cells). Next stop Cambridge UK
@roserventotormo
!
Another win by the Barzilay-led team, in applying AI to radiology. She relishes a challenge, so now has her sights on the uterus and endometriosis / adenomyosis - arguably the Mt Everest of interpretation...cuz the data are so thin. Let's fix that!
Friday, Sept 22! An amazing endometriosis / adenomyosis / gynecology Research and Development Workshop @ MIT - for clinicians and scientists to come together! Learn more, including how to register (virtual or IRL)
Today is the day I learn the details of a new NON-HORMONAL endometriosis drug (!!!!!!??!!) thanks to Medicon Valley Alliance and the BioInnovation Institute in Copenhagen. Soooo worth the flight!
A magnificent piece of sleuthing in the endometriosis world....superb work from Krina Zondervon and an international team pointing to a possible new endometriosis drug target **in some subset of patients***
We need a moonshot for Menstruation Science. The time is now. Thanks to
@BostonGlobeMag
for letting me spell it out. And catch up with our FemTech team at the next SeXX and Immunity Event Nov 2, 4 pm at MIT! See
@ImmunoFever
posts.
The cacao pods, lulled by the incessant tap tap tap of the computer keyboard, are oblivious to the impending blizzard and just want all those endometriosis manuscripts to get submitted already because school starts Monday!
The gorgeous beauty of the human endometrium, revealed as never before, by MIT label-free optics geniuses Sixian You and Kunzan Liu. MIT is Ground Zero for ScienceXX. Where science is both beautiful, and reveals how the human uterus has lessons for all of human biology.
Endometriosis Awareness Month! Also Adenomyosis awareness (right?!)! Endo and Adeno - are they twins? Or just siblings? Soooo many questions.
@SAOscience
highlights the perspective
@JuanGnecco4
and I wrote on how to frame some of the questions.
And you DEFINITELY won't write a proposal about fibroids....which afflict a huge percent of black women symptomatically, NOT a "benign" disease, but common and morbid and more common in black women....
@Lola_UMich
you are SO on target here! Amen!
This is what we mean. "The people who get to do the research set the research that gets done." Diverse people study diverse problems, period.
If you have zero Black women in your life, it may be difficult to see their higher incident of BC. You won't write a proposal about it.
Endometriosis genetic risk - and co-morbid risk- revealed. A magnificent international collaboration shows links to migraine and other chronic pain diseases. Kudos to Krina Zondervan and the whole team. Breathtakingly beautiful paper.
We celebrate the light this year, in service of women who need cures for menstrual disorders. When there is no cure for people with the best access - imagine life for the rest. Kudos to friends for their service.
@rdkamm
@BarzilayRegina
@sixian_you
@ImmunoFever
@Peter_Movilla
Calling all faculty candidates who want to apply bioengineering to women's health: Cornell BME is hiring!
@fischbcl17
is chairing the search committee and MIT alum Jan Lammerding is an enthusiastic search co-lead.
A fantastic resource for endometriosis patients - AND their doctors AND their parents, siblings, friends, hey EVERYONE - Society for Women's Health Research EndoToolkit. You can bet I insisted on the GI symptoms in teens getting some sunshine!
All my peeps need to pay attention to this: when gynecology surgeons are underpaid, women suffer. Gaining parity in NIH investment in "female" diseases, and in treatment for them, is a major civil rights issue for our era.
A shout out to all the clinicians who save lives every day, but especially to this heroine who saved mine, again and again. Dr. Annie Liau has been my Ob/Gyn since my early postdoc days, and I would not be here still without her amazing care.
Grad student Ellen Kan teaching the endometriosis community how to build vascularized lesions from patient samples. Can’t wait to share these tools she worked so hard to build
#wce2023
Endometriosis AND adenomyosis are adolescent diseases. Thank you
@PaolaVigano3
for your tireless efforts to help these suffering girls. Excellent decision tree, should be on every pediatricians wall.
Is endometriosis due to a mismatch between genetic adaptation and socio-environmental evolution? If true, a secondary prevention in symptomatic adolescents should be considered.
@policlinicoMI
#Paolovercellini
#endometriosis
Why is MIT launching a Moon(Mars) shot for Menstruation Science? To solve problems like this: Iron deficiency in women of all socioeonomic classes is rampant. Unbelievable we still live like this in 2024.
@_LourdesMedrano
reports for
@undarkmag
:
My favorite way to fight the side effects of estrogen deprivation (Er+ bc). I get every bug that goes around so am missing WBC in Korea this week (hi to all my biomat friends there!) More motivation to study SeXX & immunity with
@ImmunoFever
@TheBrysonLab
"Science of Endometriosis"! We are thrilled to launch an INTERACTIVE educational program to teach patients and their families - ANYONE - the basics of how clinicians and scientists study endometriosis (and adenomyosis). THIS SUNDAY July 11 4 pm.
A happy marriage starts with....analysis of cell migration! 27 years ago, Out of Town News failed to get their weekly hard copies of Nature, dashing my V-Day present plans for Lauffenburger, whose seminal paper (Palecek et al) was in it. The gesture counted - we got engaged.
And don't get me started on the ~10:1 ratio for ED:Adenomyosis. Adeno = a leading cause of female infertility.... infertility is just the tip of the iceberg: the pain, the bleeding, the gaslighting. CGR
@MIT
is also on the hunt for donors as NIH is way behind...
In 2019 there were 5.8x more publications on erectile dysfunction than on all of female infertility.
We're launching a philanthropic effort to help level the field by funding more female reproductive health research.
Looking for connections to donors that can help. Please RT!
A rising tide lifts all boats! Fellow endo/adenomyosis warriors at Roche/ Genentech bring you the message that what we learn about the endometrium can be broadly useful!
C'mon, MIT - let's push this big bad elephant out of the room. Join us, including
@SuriTavneet
, in starting the push, on Killian Court next Wed at 4:45 pm!
MIT can address this elephant in the room: Bad periods!
The almost 6 month saga of depositing sequence data in dbGaP is over! So - paper on endometrial coculture in synthetic hydrogel is accepted by Med! And the matrix was licensed this month so soon, you can try this at home…
Postdoc positions! We are expanding our project with NovoNordisk and looking ahead to a broader industry consortium and MIT core facility...great group, anyone looking for a liver MPS-related postdoc (or MPS platform), check it out!
The maternal instinct is a force of nature...so we fight endometriosis with everything we've got....capsule summary of the motivation and current frontiers in that battle in this little TEDxMIT talk (and yeah, doing the JNKi next steps - today!!)
Good times today with Roser Vento Tormo in lab @ MIT today, planning a collaboration to unravel the mysteries of the uterus! And cure endometriosis, right?! We will build the model and she will tell us if it is real......more good times ahead!
“1 of 10 women in reproductive age suffer from endometriosis, but we don’t have a diagnostic tool and we don’t have a treatment for it.” -Roser Vento-Tormo of
@sangerinstitute
Roser is mapping the female reproductive system to better understand diseases
Why yes, we grow theobroma cacao trees from seed here in New England! All MIT Biological Engineering first year grad students will be welcomed with their own trees this fall, from the crop planted during recruiting weekend :)
Menstruation! Come learn about it from one of the world's foremost authorities, Hilary Critchley, THIS THURSDAY at 4 pm. Stay for the reception, and learn more about her, and the Moonshot for Menstruation Science launching at MIT! Zoom link in QR code
Proud to be on the board of the Society for Women's Health Research, advocating for more research and action on sex-based differences in disease. Kudos to them for an endometriosis webinar event Mar. 16