March is Endometriosis Awareness Month. A legislative working group in Connecticut said it’s seen progress in researching the disease.
Endometriosis is a condition in which tissue similar to the uterus grows outside the uterus. It’s a chronic inflammatory condition with no cure. It affects one in 10 women and is an underdiagnosed and under-researched disease. It can take from seven to 10 years to receive a diagnosis.
State Representative Jillian Gilchrist founded the Connecticut Endometriosis Working Group in 2021 to raise awareness and make policy recommendations. Gilchrist said she established the group after a friend of hers explained her experience with the disease.
“The experience of so many women across this state and across this country and across this world where they are experiencing a great deal of pain. When they go to the doctor, they're unfortunately told it's in their head. It is not in their head,” Gilchrist said.
Gilchrist said the awareness has paved the way for state-funded research with the help of a data and specimen bio-repository. EndoRISE is a state-supported initiative that disseminates information, raises public awareness and collects samples for clinical research.
“That bio-repository has now collected over 5,000 samples and will be helping to ensure that we can have diagnostics and treatment for this disease,” Gilchrist said.
Dr. Kathy Potts is the co-founder of MetriBio, an endometrial therapeutics company based in Boston. Potts said the company’s technology was developed based on research conducted at Yale University. She said the goal for the company is to build the first disease-modifying drug for endometriosis.
“We use these patient tissue samples to build the endometriosis samples in the dish. So essentially, we can model endometriosis. We use this to study what causes and drives the disease, but also we can then use this as a platform to develop new therapeutics,” Potts said.
