Nociceptor-macrophage crosstalk in endometriosis: insights into pain and disease progression

Interviewer: Today, we're speaking with Professor Michael Rogers from Harvard Medical School about his recently published paper in Science Translational Medicine. The paper offers a new approach to treating endometriosis, a debilitating inflammatory disease, by targeting a neuroimmune communication pathway that is mediated by the calcitonin gene-related peptide, or CGRP, in short. To start, could you give us a brief overview of endometriosis, currently available treatments, and unmet needs of the disease? Prof. Rogers: Yeah, happy to. Endometriosis is a very widespread disease. About 10% of women are affected by endometriosis during their reproductive years. Meaning that, worldwide, hundreds of millions of individuals are affected by endometriosis right now. Endometriosis is defined as the growth of tissue that resembles the endometrium outside of the uterine lumen. The endometrium is the tissue that lines the uterus, and it's the tissue that is shed every month during menstruation. Endometriosis, from a pathologist's point of view, is defined as the presence of tissue that looks like that tissue growing someplace else in the body. From a patient's perspective, endometriosis is characterized by pain, which can be debilitating and/or by infertility. For women who are diagnosed with endometriosis because of infertility, treatments can include surgery to remove endometriosis lesions, or it can include in vitro fertilization,