33 projects are receiving funding to advance women’s health research, strengthen scientific collaboration, and expand shared biomedical resources across Massachusetts
BOSTON – Today, Economic Development Secretary Eric Paley, Undersecretary of Business Strategies Zenobia Moochhala, and Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) leadership joined industry, academic, and legislative leaders at Boston Medical Center (BMC) to announce more than $10 million in funding to support 33 projects that will advance women’s health research, foster new collaborations between innovative companies and academic institutions, and expand access to high-quality patient biospecimens across Massachusetts.
The funding, awarded through the MLSC’s Women’s Health Initiative, the Women’s Health Collaboration track of the Accelerating Research through Collaboration (ARC) Awards, and the Biobank program, will support groundbreaking research on historically underfunded women’s health conditions, expand access to critical research infrastructure, and strengthen partnerships that accelerate scientific discovery across Massachusetts.
“Massachusetts is leading the way in discovering the next generation of treatments and cures, and we’re making sure women’s health is part of that future,” said Governor Maura Healey. “For too long, conditions that affect women have been underfunded and understudied. These investments will help researchers close those gaps, improve care for patients, and strengthen our life sciences leadership while creating economic opportunity across Massachusetts.”
“Massachusetts succeeds because our hospitals, universities, research institutions and innovative companies work together to solve some of the world’s biggest health challenges,” said Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll. These investments will strengthen those partnerships, support groundbreaking discoveries, and help bring better treatments to patients faster while reinforcing Massachusetts’ position as the global leader in life sciences.”
Since 2019, the MLSC has invested more than $22 million in women’s health research and innovation, helping catalyze more than $70 million in follow-on funding. Today’s awards build on that momentum by advancing projects focused on diseases and conditions that uniquely, disproportionately, or differently affect women, reinforcing Massachusetts’ commitment to improving health outcomes for every patient population.
“Massachusetts leads the world in life sciences because of the strength of our collaborative research ecosystem,” said Economic Development Secretary Eric Paley, co-chair of the MLSC Board of Directors. “These investments build upon that foundation by advancing women’s health research, reinforcing partnerships between industry and academia, and expanding access to the patient samples and data that will help drive the next generation of scientific breakthroughs.”
“When we invest in research that addresses longstanding gaps in scientific understanding, such as women’s health, we create new opportunities to improve care for patients everywhere,” said MLSC President and CEO Kirk Taylor, MD. “These awards reflect our commitment to supporting discoveries that improve and save lives while demonstrating Massachusetts’ commitment to better health through targeted research.”
“Boston Medical Center is the largest essential hospital in New England, giving us a unique opportunity and responsibility to advance research that addresses the health needs of all communities,” said Megan Bair-Merritt, MD, MSCE, Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Boston Medical Center Health System. “Investments like those made by the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center advance exactly the kind of rigorous, inclusive science we believe in — research designed not just to generate knowledge, but to close the diagnostic and treatment gaps that our patients live with every day and ensure that the discoveries we make reach the people who need them most.”
Women’s Health Initiative
The MLSC is providing more than $6.5 million through its Women’s Health Initiative to support 18 awardees across 14 projects advancing research in Pregnancy-Induced Hypertension and Perimenopause/Menopause, two prevalent but historically underfunded areas of research in the biomedical field. The initiative helps researchers move promising discoveries closer to clinical application while ensuring a broad spectrum of Women’s Health challenges are addressed over time.
Awardees focused on Pregnancy-Induced Hypertension include:
- Andrea Edlow, MD, MSc, Massachusetts General Hospital; Ai-ris Collier, MD, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Thomas McElrath, MD, PhD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Project Title: Consortium: Improving Precision Health and Clinical Translation for Hypertensive Disorders of Pregnancy via Mechanistic Discovery (IMPACT-MECH)
- Michael Honigberg, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital
Project Title: Consortium: Improving Precision Health and Clinical Translation for Hypertensive Disorders of Pregnancy – Spironolactone to Improve Postpartum Hypertension Trajectories (IMPACT-POST)
- Mark Clapp, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital; Taylor Freret, MD, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Mohan Thanikachalam, MD, Tufts Medical Center
Project Title: Massachusetts Preeclampsia Research & Equity Consortium (MAPREC)- Improving Precision Health and Clinical Translation for the Hypertensive Disorders of Pregnancy via Artificial Intelligence (IMPACT-AI)
- Sheree Boulet, Boston Medical Center
Project Title: Massachusetts Preeclampsia Research & Equity Consortium (MAPREC) – A Machine Learning Approach to Preeclampsia Risk Prediction in a Diverse Population
- Lucinda Canty, PhD, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Project Title: Massachusetts Preeclampsia Research & Equity Consortium (MAPREC) – Advancing Equity in Preeclampsia: A Multilevel Analysis of Risk, Clinical Presentation, and Experience of Care
- Feifan Liu, PhD, FAMIA, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School; Crista E Johnson-Agbakwu, MD, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School
Project Title: Massachusetts Preeclampsia Research & Equity Consortium (MAPREC) – FairAI-PIH: Fairness- aware AI Detection & Risk Prediction for Pregnancy-Induced Hypertension
- Joyce Wong, PhD, Boston University
Project Title: A Novel Biomimetic Model of Spiral Artery Remodeling to Screen a Drug Repurposing Library for Preeclampsia
- Amanda Kentner, PhD, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Project Title: Maternal Hypothalamic Reorganization and Brain-Derived Extracellular Vesicles as Early Biomarkers of Pregnancy-Induced Hypertension Risk
- Jie Shen, PhD, Northeastern University; Janet Chollet, MD, Procyrn LLC, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Project Title: Immune-Directed Therapeutic Program to Reduce End-Organ Damage and Prevent Preterm Birth in Preeclampsia
Awardees focused on Perimenopause and Menopause include:
- Li-Huei Tsai, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Project Title: Elucidating the Paradoxical Effects of Hormone Replacement Therapy on Alzheimer’s Disease
- Brianne Connizzo, PhD, Boston University
Project Title: Influence of Menopause on Tendon’s Response to Exercise
- Dawn DeMeo, MD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Project Title: Multiomic Discovery for Women’s Lung Health
- Samia Mora, MD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Project Title: Menopause-related pathways of cardiovascular risk
- Anna Lepesteur Gianlorenco, PhD, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital
Project Title: Transcutaneous Auricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation in Perimenopause: EEG Signatures of Symptom Modulation
Women’s Health Collaboration Program
The MLSC is investing $1.5 million across two collaborative projects that bring together academic researchers and industry partners to improve discovery and technical innovation addressing pressing life science questions around Women’s Health.
Awardees:
- James Monaghan, PhD, Northeastern University; Sandra Shefelbine, PhD, Northeastern University
Industry Partner: LifeCanvas Technologies
Project Title: Four-Dimensional Lightsheet Imaging of Defective Skeletal Development and Regeneration Associated with Turner Syndrome
- Jian Shu, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital
Industry Partner: Boston IVF
Project Title: Virtual Placenta: AI-Driven Platforms for Diagnosis and Drug Discovery in Recurrent Pregnancy Loss
Biobank Program
The MLSC is investing $2 million through the Biobank program to support 13 projects at 11 academic medical centers and research institutions, expanding access to patient biospecimens and associated clinical data. Working across Massachusetts, these partners will help establish disease-specific biobanks sourced from diverse patient populations, providing researchers and life sciences companies with the resources needed to accelerate biomedical discovery.
The MLSC is partnering with academic medical centers as well as industry leaders to build the Biobank program’s core infrastructure, with Advarra, DNAnexus, Datavant, and Azenta supporting ethics and regulatory oversight, secure data systems, privacy-preserving data linkage, and biospecimen management. Based on insights from an ecosystem-wide survey, Alzheimer’s disease and colorectal cancer were selected as the program’s initial focus areas, with additional disease areas to follow in future rounds. Together, these efforts will expand access to high-quality biospecimens and linked data, strengthen collaboration across Massachusetts’ research community, and support the development of new diagnostics and therapies.
Awardees:
- Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine
Project Title: Alzheimer’s Disease Sample Collection
- Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Project Title: Alzheimer’s Disease Sample Collection
- Massachusetts General Hospital
Project Title: Alzheimer’s Disease Sample Collection
- Tufts University School of Dental Medicine
Project Title: Alzheimer’s Disease Sample Collection
- Baystate Medical Center, Inc.
Project Title: Colorectal Cancer Sample Collection
- Boston Medical Center Health System
Project Title: Colorectal Cancer Sample Collection
- Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Project Title: Colorectal Cancer Sample Collection
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Project Title: Colorectal Cancer Sample Collection
- Harvard School of Dental Medicine
Project Title: Colorectal Cancer Sample Collection
- Massachusetts General Hospital
Project Title: Colorectal Cancer Sample Collection
- University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School
Project Title: Colorectal Cancer Sample Collection
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Project Title: Colorectal Cancer & Alzheimer’s Disease Sample Collection
- Lahey Clinic
Project Title: Colorectal Cancer & Alzheimer’s Disease Sample Collection
Statements of Support:
“We are excited to include participants from the population in Western Massachusetts in the MLSC’s Colorectal biobank,” said Sallie Schneider, PhD, Associate Professor of Surgery, Baystate Health. “Baystate and the Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute are dedicated to enhancing translational research, and this MLSC initiative is an exciting opportunity to collaborate across the state and help advance treatment and diagnosis for colorectal cancer.”
“This Biobank program will make a difference in making samples available to advance Alzheimer’s disease research, towards building on recent therapeutic advances to help our patients,” said Michael Miller, PhD, Principal Investigator and Neuropathologist, Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
“Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is one of the world’s leading causes of death, yet it remains under investigated and underfunded—especially when it comes to understanding how it affects women,” said Dawn DeMeo, MD, Professor of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Closing this knowledge gap is essential. Through big data research, we will explore molecular pathways that contribute to COPD during the menopausal transition, with the goal of enabling earlier diagnosis, more personalized treatments, and better lung health for women. We are sincerely grateful to Mass Life Science for investing in this research at the intersection of reproductive and molecular aging, lung function, and COPD, and for catalyzing this opportunity to transform the future of women’s lung health.”
“We’re grateful for this support, which will help us expand collection of patients’ biofluids and tissue to accelerate better, earlier diagnoses and new therapies for Alzheimer’s disease,” said Thor Stein, MD, PhD, Director, Neuropathology Core, Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. “Through the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Center, we’ll also deepen efforts to understand how repetitive traumatic brain injury increases Alzheimer’s disease risk and affects long-term brain health so patients and families benefit from more informed care.”
“Our team is excited to receive funding from MLSC from the Women’s Health Initiative,” said Joyce Wong, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, Boston University. “Their support is critical towards moving forward women’s health research in the Commonwealth.”
“Heart disease is the #1 cause of death in women, yet it affects women in different ways than men,” said Samia Mora, MD, Associate Physician, Preventive Medicine, Cardiovascular Medicine, and Women’s Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “After menopause, a woman’s chance of having a heart attack increases rapidly, especially for women who experience early menopause, as they have about 2 times higher risk of suffering a heart attack. The biological factors driving this are unclear. Our laboratory is investigating which proteins change during menopause and how they are related to future risk of heart attacks and stroke in women. Proteomics will be measured using Seer’s Proteograph® platform, a tool for large-scale protein analysis that can help identify biomarkers and other biological signals not captured by conventional approaches. With the support of the MLSC’s grant funding, we aim to discover new pathways that link menopause with heart attacks and stroke in women so that we could intervene on these pathways and help women live longer and healthier lives.”
“We are very excited to be selected to participate in the Biobank program for colorectal cancer, which is now the leading cause of cancer-related death in individuals under the age of 50,” said Kimmie Ng, MD, MPH, Associate Chief of the Division of Gastrointestinal Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. “This statewide effort will be critical to elucidating the underlying biology and environmental drivers of the disease and developing novel strategies for prevention, early detection, and treatment.”
“This award gives us a unique opportunity to advance our understanding of the oral-gut microbiome axis in colorectal cancer,” said Magda Feres, PhD, Professor and Chair of Oral Medicine, Infection & Immunity, Harvard School of Dental Medicine. “By integrating oral, stool, and tumor samples from the same patients with state-of-the-art multi-omics analyses and machine learning, we can move closer to breakthroughs in early diagnosis and prevention. We are thrilled to be part of this initiative.”
“We are very grateful to MLSC for this grant and for their continued commitment to supporting and valuing women’s health research,” said Amanda Kenter, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. “This funding will advance our efforts to identify novel mechanisms underlying pregnancy-induced hypertension while providing students and other early-career researchers with hands-on biomedical research training. We are excited to help mentor the next generation of scientists who will contribute to Massachusetts’ vibrant life sciences workforce.”
“The MLSC’s vision and commitment to the Biobank will serve as a crucial foundation for both academic and biotechnology companies operating in the Alzheimer’s and colorectal cancer fields, said Mark Albers, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital. “Beyond expediting research towards groundbreaking therapies for these devastating diseases, this pilot program will pave the way for other disease areas and contribute to Massachusetts’s leadership in the biotechnology sector.”
“High blood pressure after delivery remains one of the most common and preventable threats to new mothers, yet clinicians still have no reliable way to know who is most at risk,” said Mark A Clapp, MD, Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialist, Massachusetts General Hospital. “With this support from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, we will combine artificial intelligence, routinely collected health-record data, and continuous wearable monitoring to identify high-risk mothers before they leave the hospital, so that postpartum care can become more proactive, personalized, and safer.”
“We are enormously grateful to the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center for investing in this critical and long-underserved area of pregnancy health,” said Andrea Edlow, MD, MSc, Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialist, Massachusetts General Hospital. “Persistent high blood pressure after pregnancy remains a leading cause of maternal morbidity that we still cannot reliably predict or prevent. I am thrilled to partner with colleagues across three of Boston’s largest academic medical centers on this multidisciplinary effort. Together, we have a real opportunity to build a mechanistic understanding of postpartum preeclampsia and translate it directly into better care and a dramatically improved patient experience in the weeks after delivery.”
“Recurrent pregnancy loss affects millions of families, yet we still lack effective tools to understand, diagnose, and treat its underlying causes,” said Jian Shu, PhD, Assistant Professor, Massachusetts General Hospital. “By building a ‘Virtual Placenta’ that integrates AI, imaging, and molecular data, we hope to transform pregnancy loss from a poorly understood condition into one that can be precisely diagnosed, treated, and ultimately prevented.”
“This partnership with LifeCanvas gives us a new way to see skeletal development and regeneration as it actually happens, in real time and in 3D,” said James Monaghan, PhD, Professor of Biology and the Director of the Institute for Chemical Imaging of Living Systems, Northeastern University. “It gives us a level of insight into skeletal biology that just hasn’t been possible before.”
“I am honored to receive this award and grateful for the opportunity to advance research aimed at improving the health and well-being of women during perimenopause,” said Anna Carolyna Gianlorenco, PhD, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. “This project explores a noninvasive form of nerve stimulation that may help relieve common symptoms by influencing how the brain and body communicate. We hope our findings will lead to a better understanding of what happens in the brain during perimenopause and support the development of more effective, accessible treatments that improve women’s quality of life.”
“We are honored to be part of the MLSC Biobank program,” said Dr. Zoe Zhu, Assistant Professor, Tufts University School of Dental Medicine. “This initiative addresses a critical gap in translational research by making diverse, well-characterized patient samples accessible to the broader scientific community, and we are excited to contribute to that mission through oral sample collection.”
“We are excited to see Dr. Canty’s vital research supported through this MLSC grant,” said Allison Vorderstrasse, DNSc, RN, FAAN, Dean of the Elaine Marieb College of Nursing, UMass Amherst. “The priority of MLSC to support women’s health equity is so important for the health of all women, particularly during pregnancy, and the impact will result in better health outcomes for mothers and, subsequently, their babies.”
“Access to high quality human samples is critical to our efforts to treat diseases,” said Nate Hafer, PhD, Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine, Director of Operations for the Center for Clinical & Translational Science, UMass Chan Medical School. “We’re happy to partner with the MLSC and industry on this Biobank initiative.”
“Pregnancy-induced hypertension is one of the most common and dangerous complications of pregnancy, and it falls hardest on the communities that already face the steepest barriers to care,” said Feifan Liu, PhD, FAMIA, Associate Professor of Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, Founding director of innovative AI for Health Lab, UMass Chan. “We are very grateful for this support from MLSC allowing us to build AI that is accurate and fair by design, so clinicians can identify these cases earlier and more equitably for every birthing person in Massachusetts.”
“There are often delays in early recognition and management of Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy,” said Crista E Johnson-Agbakwu, MD, Professor of Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Inaugural Executive Director of the Collaborative in Health Equity, UMass Chan. “By harnessing AI tools in a way that is grounded in real-world clinical care and the diverse communities we serve, this project has the potential to help clinicians identify patients at risk earlier, intervene sooner, and deliver more equitable care for every pregnant person.”
About the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center
The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) is a quasi-public economic development investment agency dedicated to supporting the growth and development of the life sciences in Massachusetts, home to the most verdant and productive life sciences ecosystem in the world. Through public-private funding initiatives, the MLSC supports innovation, research and development, commercialization, and manufacturing activities in the fields of biopharma, medical device, diagnostics and digital health. Since 2008, the MLSC has strategically deployed more than $1.1 billion in Massachusetts, through a combination of grants, loans, capital infrastructure investments, tax incentives and workforce development programs. These investments have created thousands of jobs and propelled the development of new therapies, devices and scientific advancements that are improving patient health and well-being in Massachusetts and beyond.
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