Engineering a cure
When Linda Griffith’s 12-year-old niece started suffering from unbearable abdominal pain a few years ago, Griffith felt pangs of sympathy — and déjà vu. Griffith was also 12 years old when she first felt the pain of endometriosis, a disease caused when tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus, usually attaching to the lining of the abdominal cavity or ovaries. She went to doctor after doctor, some of whom tried to tell her that she was suffering from “too much stress,” she recalls, until she was finally diagnosed at the age of 28 during surgery.Since then, Griffith, a professor of biological and mechanical engineering, has had nine surgeries including a hysterectomy but still suffers from recurrence of the disease. Now, she and colleagues at MIT and Harvard Medical School are launching a new center to investigate endometriosis, which is often linked to infertility and is...