Scientist With Endometriosis Seeks Insights Into Her Disease

An MIT professor has launched a new center to study endometriosis and other diseases of the female reproductive tract, the Boston Globe reports. There are a few interesting elements to the story.

For one, the professor, Linda Griffith, has endometriosis, which occurs when tissue that lines the uterus grows in other places and can cause problems such as pain and infertility. Griffith has had nine surgeries, including a hysterectomy to treat the disease. And she was inspired to start the center in part by the experience of her niece, who showed similar symptoms, including debilitating pain — and who, like Griffith, wasn’t properly diagnosed.

For another, Griffith is something of a star researcher. See Exhibit A, the MacArthur Genius Grant she won in 2006 for her work in figuring out how to grow liver cells outside the body and other feats of tissue engineering.

Along those lines, much of the work at the new center will be basic research, trying to get a better understanding of the physiology of gynepathology, a blanket term for endometriosis and other non-cancerous diseases of the female reproductive tract.

More broadly, Griffith hopes to bring attention to the disease, which the NIH says affects at least 5.5 million women in North America, but which often goes undiscussed and undiagnosed. “We need gynepathology to be something my dean can talk about with a straight face the same way he would talk about breast cancer,” Griffith told the Globe.

She’ll have a bit of help on the PR side from Padma Lakshmi, who has endometriosis, and who will be in Cambridge today for the official launch of the center.

Photo by Donna Coveney via MIT

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