University of Connecticut : UConn Health/JAX Study Gives Better Understanding of Endometriosis and How it Grows; The study builds a robust foundation for a better understanding of endometriosis and how it grows.
ENPNewswire-July 29, 2022--University of Connecticut : UConn Health/JAX Study Gives Better Understanding of Endometriosis and How it Grows; The study builds a robust foundation for a better understanding of endometriosis and how it grows
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Release date- 27072022 - The tissue that lines the uterus, known as the endometrium, serves as the location of embryo implantation and the source of the arteries that lead into the placenta to support a fetus during pregnancy. But in humans, when there is no fertilized egg, the endometrium is shed through menstruation. The endometrium is thus unusual in that it is regularly lost, then proliferates again, throughout a woman's reproductive age. In about 10 percent of women, however, endometrium-like tissues (known as lesions) also grow outside of the uterus, leading to endometriosis.
Endometriosis is characterized by pain and can cause infertility, but its molecular mechanisms and drivers remain unknown. The Jackson Laboratory's (JAX) Elise Courtois, Ph.D., is leading research efforts to reveal what causes endometriosis and to focus more clinical attention on it in partnership with UConn Health's gynecological surgeon Danielle Luciano, M.D.
Definitive diagnosis and clinical response still present significant challenges, with a common treatment being hormonal therapy with surgery. Unfortunately, surgery must be repeated if lesions recur, and they often do. To improve the situation, a better understanding of how and why the lesions grow, their cellular makeup, their microenvironments, and other aspects of their biology is essential.
Courtois, JAX's associate director of the Single Cell Biology group, in collaboration with Luciano, UConn School of Medicine Associate Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology, recently completed an important study to develop a comprehensive cell atlas of the disease based on lesions obtained from 14 individuals who had treatment for endometriosis at UConn Health's Center of Excellence in Minimally Invasive Gynecology.
'Single-cell analysis of endometriosis reveals a coordinated transcriptional program driving immunotolerance and angiogenesis across eutopic and ectopic tissues,' a paper published in Nature Cell Biology, includes a thorough comparison of healthy endometrium tissue and ectopic (outside their normal site) lesions. The data also describes the endometriosis microenvironment and the conditions that allow the lesions to form...
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