I worked on the logistics for collecting menstrual blood samples and successfully obtained Institutional Review Board approval to proceed with this research. I then began recruiting study participants with the help of the staff at LJI’s John and Susan Major Center for Clinical Investigation.

Once my colleagues had collected those donor samples, I successfully detected some antigen-specific T cells in the menstrual effluent, including T cells that responded to pathogens such as Epstein-Barr virus. I also found that a large proportion of T cells in the menstrual effluent express protein markers not commonly seen in peripheral blood. This suggests that these T cells may be specifically adapted to the uterine environment.

I am now working on several experiments to better understand these T cells, including testing the response to a new peptide pool specifically designed to detect T cell responses to a key protein on Human Papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is of interest because the virus is one of the most common sexually transmitted pathogens worldwide and the leading cause of cervical cancer.

Overall, my project so far has demonstrated that it is possible to successfully isolate and measure antigen-specific T cells from menstrual effluent, and I have observed that T cells from the uterine environment exhibit distinct characteristics. These findings are encouraging, as they suggest that this study protocol could be applied to a range of research areas and gynecologic conditions.