Breakthrough aims to shorten the time women wait for effective treatment from an average of five years to just five months
By Alexandra Jirstrand
(BOSTON) – The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University has been awarded funding from Wellcome Leap’s $50 million The Missed Vital Sign program, which seeks to transform how menstruation is understood and treated in healthcare. The Wyss will use its pioneering Organ Chip technology to create the first human model of heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB), a condition that affects one in three women of reproductive age yet remains underdiagnosed, undertreated, and poorly understood.
The new Organ Chip model will allow researchers to uncover the causal factors and early biomarkers of HMB progression and identify potential non-hormonal therapeutics by combining multi-omics analysis with artificial intelligence (AI)-driven computational approaches. This breakthrough aims to shorten the time women wait for effective treatment from an average of five years to just five months.
Addressing an overlooked women’s health crisis
HMB is more common than asthma or diabetes, yet it has been largely ignored by healthcare systems worldwide. Its consequences are profound. As outlined on Wellcome Leap’s website:
- Every minute in the U.S., a woman requires a blood transfusion due to menstruation.
- Up to 50% of reproductive-aged women globally (950 million people) are iron deficient, with chronic HMB expected to be a major contributor.
- Women with HMB miss an average of 3.6 working weeks annually, costing the U.S. economy more than $94 billion each year.
- Mental health impacts are significant, with women suffering from HMB experiencing rates of anxiety and depression three times higher than the general female population.
A novel research approach
Until now, progress in HMB research has been slowed by the lack of relevant animal or preclinical human models that replicate the key features of this complex condition. The Wyss will leverage its human Organ Chip technology, which recreates the microenvironment of human tissues and organs, to build uterus chips lined with human endometrial cells, stroma, and microvasculature. These chips will replicate both healthy menstrual physiology and HMB, enabling scientists to study how factors such as microbial imbalance, inflammation, oxygen levels, and gene mutations drive abnormal bleeding.
Building on five years of breakthroughs in women’s health, the Wyss team has already developed Organ Chip models of the vagina, cervix, and fallopian tube, as well as intestine and lung chips, which reveal how female hormones and inflammation shape organ-level responses. This work has opened new therapeutic avenues for conditions such as bacterial vaginosis, pre-term birth, and inflammatory bowel disease.
The new HMB-focused research will further extend this platform by modeling menstrual bleeding and performing multi-omics analyses to identify biomarkers of disease progression while leveraging AI tools like NeMoCAD, developed at Wyss, to rapidly identify and repurpose non-hormonal drugs for HMB. This approach should provide unprecedented mechanistic insight into the links between the reproductive tract microbiome, immune responses, and menstrual bleeding, as well as identify new therapeutics to address this disorder.
Transforming the future of women’s health
“Wellcome Leap’s support recognizes both the urgent need and the transformative potential of this research,” said Wyss Founding Director and Principal Investigator leading this project, Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D. Ingber is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “By creating the first physiologically relevant human model of heavy menstrual bleeding, we hope to not only uncover its root causes but also unlock new, life-changing treatments that can be delivered to patients in months rather than years.”
The Wyss Institute’s work within The Missed Vital Sign program reflects a growing global movement to prioritize women’s health research, close knowledge gaps, and improve quality of life for millions of women worldwide. This project emerged from the Women’s Health Catalyst at the Wyss, which was founded to support research and innovation addressing critical gaps in therapeutics, diagnostics, and medical devices for women’s healthcare.