Women's Health Innovation and Equity at UCLA LABEST 2024
The UCLA LABEST 2024 panel on women’s health marked a seismic shift in how we research, diagnose, and treat conditions that disproportionately affect women. From the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research to cutting-edge AI, chip technology, and stem cell advances, this session showcased how innovation is bridging centuries of gender bias in medicine.
The Historical Gap in Women’s Health Research
Dr. Pregler opened the session with a poignant reminder: medical research was, for much of the 20th century, centered on a mythical "70-kilogram man." Women were often studied only as smaller versions of men, with reproductive organs placed in a "black box." This gender bias led to vast funding disparities. Even as recently as 2021, 14 of the 15 most underfunded diseases relative to their burden of illness were conditions primarily affecting women.
President Biden’s $1 billion White House Initiative on Women’s Health, announced in March 2024, promises to correct this. It funds interdisciplinary research through the NIH and NSF and calls on regulatory bodies to revise statutes and policies that inhibit equity.
AI and the Transformation of Urologic Care
Dr. A. Lenore Ackerman, a urogynecologist, addressed an overlooked epidemic: functional urinary disorders. These conditions, including incontinence and urinary urgency, affect nearly all women by age 80 and often result in profound social isolation. Despite their prevalence, care remains inadequate.
Why? Diagnostic categories for these conditions were historically created to pair with pharmaceutical marketing needs, not underlying biology. Dr. Ackerman's lab is using machine learning to upend this model. By analyzing symptom patterns across thousands of patients, her team identified nine AI-generated subtypes of urinary disorders—far more nuanced than the traditional four. Early results show these subtypes better predict treatment outcomes, even outperforming specialist diagnosis in some cases.
Critically, the AI model identified patients whose symptoms were previously invisible to physicians. For instance, women with fecal incontinence who had never disclosed their symptoms were accurately flagged by the algorithm.
A Chip That Could Save Mothers’ Lives
Dr. Yalda Afshar of UCLA Maternal Fetal Medicine introduced a revolutionary chip-based diagnostic tool for placenta accreta spectrum (PAS), a dangerous pregnancy complication. As cesarean birth rates rise, PAS—a condition in which the placenta fails to detach from the uterus—is increasingly common and deadly.
Drawing parallels to cancer diagnostics, Dr. Afshar's team developed a nanochip that isolates rare placental cells from maternal blood, enabling early detection of PAS as early as the first trimester. This minimally invasive "liquid biopsy" may reduce maternal mortality by identifying patients who require specialized care months before delivery.
Beyond diagnostics, her lab investigates the placenta’s unique immune and cellular environment—a space where foreign DNA (the fetus) is not rejected by the host. Understanding this could unlock broader breakthroughs in immunology, cancer biology, and organ rejection.
Stem Cell Models to Rebuild the Ovary
Professor Amander Clark, Director of the UCLA Center for Reproductive Science, Health and Education (CRSHE), unveiled transformative research into ovarian biology. Her lab is using human pluripotent stem cells to model ovarian development and disease, with applications in infertility, aging, and contraception.
By creating ovarian organoids in vitro, Clark’s team can now generate estrogen, progesterone, and even testosterone-producing tissues outside the body. This could enable personalized drug screening, new non-hormonal contraceptives, and eventually, functional ovary regeneration.
Perhaps most compelling, Clark's group is examining ovaries from midlife women (ages 40–60)—an area long ignored by research. Contrary to assumptions, the midlife ovary is highly cellular. By identifying and rejuvenating hormone-producing cells, her team hopes to develop therapies that offer an alternative to synthetic hormone replacement.
Chromosomes, Hormones, and Fat: Rethinking Sex Differences
Dr. Karen Reue, Director of the UCLA NIH Scientific Center of Research Excellence on Sex Differences in Metabolic Syndrome, presented findings from the "Four Core Genotype" mouse model. This model uniquely separates the effects of sex chromosomes (XX vs. XY) from sex hormones (estrogen vs. testosterone).
Her research shows that having two X chromosomes—regardless of gonads—predisposes animals to greater fat storage and adverse responses to statin drugs. A key gene, KDM5C, appears to drive many of these differences. When its expression is lowered, animals exhibit reduced fat mass and improved metabolic outcomes.
This has profound implications: personalized medicine must account not just for hormones, but for chromosomal sex. As Reue noted, the drugs withdrawn due to adverse effects disproportionately harm women. Understanding X-linked gene expression could prevent those failures.
Heart Disease in Women: Stress, Disparities, and VR Solutions
Dr. Karol Watson, Director of the UCLA-Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Health Program, reminded the audience that heart disease remains the leading killer of women—exceeding breast cancer by more than 13-fold. Despite a century of data, women's heart health remains poorly addressed, especially for young and minority women.
Her research using the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis revealed that women exhibit higher stress hormone levels than men, even after adjusting for subjective stress. To counter this, Watson's team developed a virtual reality (VR) program designed to reduce stress and improve heart rate variability—a marker of cardiovascular resilience.
Participants immersed in a calming VR environment showed marked improvement in stress biomarkers. Watson's next project: using VR to motivate sedentary women to see themselves as athletes and engage in joyful physical activity.
From Awareness to Action
The panel closed with a rousing call for greater advocacy, public education, and funding. While the $1 billion federal initiative is a start, speakers emphasized that systemic change must come from all fronts: regulatory reform, patient-centered design, and consumer demand for gender-specific care.
The message was clear: Women are not smaller men. They are biologically distinct across the lifespan, and medicine must evolve accordingly.
From AI to organoids, liquid biopsies to stress biometrics, the science presented at UCLA LABEST 2024 is not only groundbreaking—it's overdue. By embracing women's bodies as worthy subjects of scientific inquiry, these researchers are rewriting the narrative of biomedical innovation, equity, and possibility.