Like many women who menstruate, Emma Backlund prefered not to think too much about the blood she shed every month. But when biotech startup NextGen Jane asked for her period blood in 2023, Backlund readily saved eight tampons from one menstrual cycle and popped them off in the post to the firm’s laboratory in Oakland, California.
Sure, it was an unusual request, but a relatively fuss-free one she was more than happy to help with – especially if it meant future girls avoiding the painful ordeal she faced growing up.
“When I turned 11, I got my first period and I thought I was dying,” says Backlund, a 27-year-old graduate student from Minnesota, in the US. “I remember telling my mum that I needed to go to the hospital. And pretty much every period I’ve had since then was like that. I would throw up every month. I missed out on social activities and school. It was just this burning, stabbing, gut-wrenching pain that continued.”
It took Backlund 13 years to discover she had endometriosis, a chronic, debilitating disorder in which the uterus’s tissue lining starts to grow outside of it. Endometriosis causes 190 million people worldwide – which is a tenth of the world’s women at reproductive age – to suffer from heavy periods, agonising pelvic pain, bladder or bowel problems and even infertility.
What’s worse, it usually takes between five and 12 years to get a diagnosis, like it has Backlund. Confirmation requires a laparoscopy, a medical procedure in which a small camera is inserted in the pelvic cavity, says Ridhi Tariyal, NextGen Jane’s cofounder and chief executive.
That’s why Tariyal and a handful of other innovative startup leaders are working to build a better diagnostic test – one that promises to be quicker, cheaper, and less invasive than surgery, and could reveal much more than a woman’s endometriosis diagnosis.
The secret, they believe, lies in period blood.
A medical gold mine
Urine samples have been examined by physicians since Babylonian and Sumerian times, some 6,000 years ago. Stools and venous blood followed suit one and two centuries ago. But period blood hasn’t ever received much clinical attention. Yet, it is a complex fluid: half of it is regular blood, while the remainder comprises proteins, hormones, bacteria, endometrial tissue and cells sloughed off from the vaginal cavity, cervix, fallopian tubes, ovaries, and more.
“You get access to cell types and other molecular signatures that you just don’t get from whole blood, saliva, and other sample types,” says Tariyal. “It’s essentially a natural biopsy that’s providing you insight into the reproductive organs.” Her firm, NextGen Jane, sends out specially designed cotton tampons to volunteers like Backlund and has analysed more than 2,000 menstrual samples from more than 330 women since its founding in 2014.
