"Somewhere in the US a woman on her period pulled out her dripping, saturated tampon. But instead of wrapping it in toilet paper and tossing it into a bin, she put the tampon in a special plastic sample container, screwed the lid on tight and mailed it to an address in Oakland, California. The address was that of NextGen Jane (NGJ), a Bay Area-based startup founded in 2014."
"NGJ is one of a handful of small, mostly women-led femtech startups that, alongside a few academic research teams, are in a race to develop blood tests using menstrual effluent collected non-invasively at home. Usually, we use urine, saliva and, of course, blood drawn from our veins to test for a range of medical conditions. The FDA-approved Cologuard test allows people to collect their own feces and send them off for screening for colon and rectal cancer."
Startups and research teams collect used tampons mailed by volunteers to obtain menstrual blood for laboratory analysis and storage. Menstrual effluent serves as a non-invasive, monthly sample type that can reveal gynecological and reproductive conditions. Researchers aim to develop diagnostics from menstrual blood to screen for cancers, monitor hormones, detect diseases such as diabetes, and advance stem cell research. A handful of mostly women-led femtech companies and academic groups are pursuing tests using home-collected samples. NextGen Jane has accumulated roughly 2,500 samples and processes them in a lab for future study, demonstrating feasibility similar to other mail-in screening tests.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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