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Six AAU Institutions Receive Awards to Advance Women’s Health

Sprint for Women's Health graphic

The federal Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) has chosen researchers from six AAU institutions to receive awards as part of its Sprint for Women’s Health program to tackle health problems that “uniquely or disproportionately affect women.” First lady Jill Biden announced the awards last week in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The Sprint for Women’s Health was launched about 10 months ago to foster innovation in women’s health and to quickly bring women’s health solutions to the market. The agency announced that it is awarding more than $110 million to a total of 23 research teams that were selected for their “high-impact and novel approaches” to women’s health issues. The following AAU institutions are among the awardees:

  • The California Institute of Technology to “develop a novel, affordable wearable sweat sensing system to measure and map chronic pain.” The $3 million award “could revolutionize chronic pain assessment by making it objective and personalized.”

  • Tufts University to “develop non-invasive wearable sensors” to assess pain levels. The $3 million award will allow researchers to develop a “smart band-aid” that quantifies “pain objectively based on a wide panel of biophysical and biochemical markers” and that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning “to develop a single objective score of pain.” According to the researchers, the sensors should help combat “an observed gender bias in the prevalence and approach to treatment of chronic pain.”

  • The University of Iowa to “develop an ovarian cancer treatment.” The $10 million award will support the first clinical trial for a new therapy currently under development at the university. The American Cancer Society projects that nearly 20,000 women will receive a diagnosis of ovarian cancer in 2024.

  • The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to develop a personalized treatment for debilitating migraines, which primarily affect women. The $3 million award will help researchers “elucidate the role of meningeal lymphatics in migraine, a debilitating neurological condition with high prevalence in women” as well as assist them in developing treatments.

  • Vanderbilt University “to develop an at-home medication to mitigate the health risks of preterm labor.” The $3.3 million award will go toward developing medication that can halt labor and reduce “health risks of preterm birth to mother and baby.”

  • Washington University in St. Louis to “develop a blood test that decodes pain and tracks symptoms to create treatments for conditions like endometriosis.” Researchers estimate that, in addition to helping women who experience chronic pain because of endometriosis, the “innovation could revolutionize the diagnosis and management of other debilitating conditions.” The team received a $3.4 million award.


Kritika Agarwal is senior editorial officer at AAU.