Revolutionary Technology

This new 3-D technology — called EVATAR — is made with human tissue and will enable scientists to conduct much-needed testing of new drugs for safety and effectiveness on the female reproductive system.EVATAR also will help scientists understand diseases of the female reproductive tract such as endometriosis, fibroids (which affect up to 80 percent of women), cancer and infertility.The ultimate goal is to use stem cells of an individual patient and create a personalized model of their reproductive system.which resembles a small cube, contains 3-D models of ovaries, fallopian tubes, the uterus, cervix, vagina and liver with special fluid pumping through all of them that performs the function of blood.

“This is nothing short of a revolutionary technology,” said lead investigator Teresa Woodruff, a reproductive scientist and director of the Women’s Health Research Institute at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.  Woodruff also is the Thomas J. Watkins Memorial Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.The organ models are able to communicate with each other via secreted substances, including hormones, to closely resemble how they all work together in the body.Woodruff is working on the project with other scientists at Northwestern, the University of Illinois at Chicago and Draper Laboratory, Inc.The microfluidic device is the size of a bento box and has a series of cables and pumps that cause media (simulated blood) to flow between wells.