The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS) has recently received a $10 million gift from Emily and Malcom Fairbairn to establish the Fairbairn Menstruation Science Fund. The endowment will support innovative research on the human uterus and its impact on sex-based differences in human immunology that contribute to gynecological disorders, as well as other systemic inflammatory diseases that disproportionally affect women. Additionally, the gift will fund public engagement efforts to reduce stigma around menstruation and bring greater attention to women’s health research.
“My mission is to support intellectually honest, open-minded scientists who embrace risk, treat failure as feedback, and remain committed to discovery over dogma,” said Emily Fairbairn. “This fund is a direct extension of that philosophy. It’s designed to fuel research into the biological realities of diseases that remain poorly understood, frequently dismissed, or disproportionately misdiagnosed in women.”
The Fairbairn Fund will directly support the research team at the MIT Center for Gynepathology Research. Led by Linda Griffith, the School of Engineering Teaching Innovation Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering, the center plans to advance its development of “organs on chips,” living models of patients. Using living cells or tissues, these devices allow researchers to experiment and do preclinical testing of drugs on human models rather than on laboratory animals, which often do not menstruate naturally and whose immune systems function differently than is the case with humans. The new fund will build the infrastructure for a “living patient avatar” facility to develop models for all kinds of health conditions.
“This fund is catalytic,” said Dr. Griffith. “Industry and government, along with other foundations, will invest if the foundational infrastructure exists. They want to employ the technologies, but it is hard to get them developed to the point they are proven to be useful. This gets us through that difficult part of the journey.”