About the Center
The MIT Center for Gynepathology Research (CGR) focuses on groundbreaking, interdisciplinary research to accelerate earlier diagnosis and more successful treatment of endometriosis and adenomyosis. Our work directly addresses:
- The Spectrum of Disease: The wide range of ways endometriosis and adenomyosis afflict patients.
- Therapeutic Diversity: The complex variations in how patients respond to available treatments.
- Overcoming Treatment Failure: The critical clinical challenge where many patients fail to respond to any existing therapies.
A Foundation of Engineering and Medicine
MIT Professor Linda Griffith founded CGR in 2009 working alongside Keith Isaacson, associate professor at Harvard Medical School, who served as the Center’s first Clinical Director. Their goal was to bring new frontiers of biological engineering to the basic biology, physiology, and pathophysiology of the female reproductive tract.
Today, CGR fosters a vibrant ecosystem of engineers, biologists, and clinicians who dive into these challenges—from growing patient-derived tissue lesions in the lab to piloting non-invasive, at-home technologies that monitor patient pain.
CGR investigators work to answer questions like, “We’re giving endometriosis patients drugs, but do we really know their level of pain, and exactly what’s causing it?” and basic science questions like, “How do endometriosis and adenomyosis lesions cause inflammation?”, “How do drugs affect endometriosis lesions?”, and “Could some drugs actually make endometriosis lesions worse?”
Shared Vision: CGR and the New MIT NAMs Center
In 2026, our mission expanded with the opening of the MIT NAMs Technology Development Center for Women’s Health companion center also directed by Dr. Linda Griffith. Funded by a landmark NIH grant, the NAMs Center focuses on developing cutting-edge New Approach Methodologies including non-animal models, microphysiological systems, and tissue engineering.
Because the research between CGR and the NAMs Center deeply overlaps, this powerful partnership accelerates our ability to translate basic science directly into clinical breakthroughs.
Explore Our Partner Center: Learn more about how we are reducing reliance on animal models and pioneering advanced human-mimicking platforms at the MIT NAMs Center Website.
Community, Outreach, and Global Collaboration
CGR serves as a vital hub in the Cambridge/Boston scientific community and globally. We host seminars and workshops, provide advanced infrastructure for experimental work with primary patient cells, and freely share newly developed reagents with investigators worldwide.
Central to our mission is an active teaching and outreach program at MIT that deeply involves undergraduate researchers and provides essential clinical exposure for pre-medical students.
Join Our Mission
Our Community: Discover the students, postdocs, staff, clinical fellows, and global collaborators driving this work on our CGR People Page.
Support Our Work: If you would like to financially support our mission to transform women’s reproductive health through tissue engineering and molecular biology, click here to donate.
