“If I had your stem cells and created a heart, liver, lung and an ovary, I could test 10 different drugs at 10 different doses on you and say, ‘Here’s the drug
that will help your Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or diabetes,’ ” the lead investigator, Teresa K. Woodruff, said in a report about the research on the Northwestern University website.
Meet Evatar: The Lab Model That Mimics the Female Reproductive System –
By CHRISTINE HAUSERMARCH 30, 2017
Researchers in the United States have created a model of a female reproductive system
that is so close to the real thing it even simulates a menstrual cycle and pregnancy hormones.
“The key here is to have an integrated picture of events occurring in multiple tissues.”
But he said a shortcoming was the use of ovarian tissue from a mouse, which has a reproductive system
controlled by the brain, rather than a monkey, whose reproductive systems are more like humans.
“All of these diseases are hormonally driven, and we really don’t know how to treat them except for surgery,” Joanna E.
Burdette, a researcher with the University of Illinois, said in the Northwestern University report on the research.
The ovary for Evatar uses mouse tissue, and other organs are fashioned from human
tissue obtained from hysterectomy surgery patients for the other organs.
Dr. Jerome F. Strauss III, professor at the obstetrics
and gynecology department at the Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Medicine, said the research model was a significant step forward because it did not isolate the cells that are important to the function of the uterus.