Grant: Catalyst Grant: NWHRI: Innovation Fund - Biomedical Discovery Grants

Endometriosis affects 200 million women worldwide. Despite being one of the most common reasons for surgical removal of the uterus (hysterectomy), the disease remains poorly diagnosed and ineffectively treated. The average delay of diagnosis ranges from 7-11 years. There is urgent unmet need to identify effective non-invasive diagnostic test. In this context, extracellular vesicles (originally thought to be garbage bags released by the cells) have attracted lot of attention due to their unique cargo that carry disease specific information. We have previously shown that these extracellular vesicles from endometriosis patients carry unique molecules (miRNA, protein) compared to the samples obtained from control, fertile women. In this proposal, we seek to document endometriosis disease stage (stages I-IV) and phenotype (endometrioma, superficial lesion and deep infiltrating endometriosis) specific cargo within these extracellular vesicles that can be identified as unique molecular fingerprint. We will use state of the art molecular platforms to identify nucleic acid, protein and lipids in these extracellular vesicles. This information will help us develop new generation of diagnostics for endometriosis.