HMB is more common than asthma or diabetes, yet often ignored - Harvard Gazette

"Every minute, a woman in the U.S. requires a blood transfusion due to heavy menstrual bleeding, or HMB. One in three women reports having the condition - which can lead to iron deficiency and anemia - and missing an average of 3.6 weeks of work a year, costing the U.S. economy roughly $94 billion annually, according to the nonprofit Wellcome Leap. Patients routinely suffer for up to five years before they get help, despite HMB being more common than asthma or diabetes in reproductive-aged women."

"To address this gap, Donald Ingber, founding director of the Wyss Institute and the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children's Hospital, is developing the first human model of HMB. In September, the institute announced it had received funding from Wellcome Leap's $50 million Missed Vital Sign program to build an organ-on-a-chip model of menstruation, using the platform Ingber first developed at the Wyss in 2010."

""Women's health has been ignored for so long - and that goes well beyond reproductive health," Ingber said. "This technology can break down that inequality and focus on women's health in a direct way." An organ on a chip is effectively a "living, 3D cross-section of a major functional unit of an organ," explained Ingber, who is also the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences."

Heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB) affects one in three women and can cause iron deficiency, anemia, and significant work loss, costing roughly $94 billion annually. Patients often wait about five years for effective treatment, despite HMB's prevalence among reproductive-aged women. Causes of HMB remain poorly understood. The Wyss Institute is developing the first human organ-on-a-chip model of menstruation, funded by Wellcome Leap's Missed Vital Sign program, to enable focused study and therapy development. The program aims to shorten time to effective care by more than tenfold. Organ-on-a-chip devices recreate living, 3D cross-sections of organ functional units for targeted research.

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