Menstrual blood becoming a valuable medical tool
- World Half Full
- Jul 17
- 5 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
HEALTH/SCIENCE
When Ridhi Tariyal was in her early thirties, she asked her gynecologist for a fertility test, only to be told such a test wasn’t possible. Tariyal knew otherwise. With an MBA from Harvard and a Master of Science in biomedical enterprise from MIT, she was familiar with the Anti-Müllerian Hormone, an established marker of ovarian reserve. The test existed. Still, her doctor wouldn’t order it.
That experience left her frustrated enough to turn her own health into a science project. “There are thousands of women like me,” Tariyal, now 45, says. “Women are waiting longer to have children, but they still want information about their reproductive health.”
Regular fertility tests require blood samples, so that raised an obvious question: Where could women collect blood easily and repeatedly without a clinic visit?
The answer, she realised, was hiding in plain sight. Every month, billions of women discard biological material containing blood, immune cells, bacteria and fragments of tissue shed from the uterine lining. More than 800 genes are expressed differently in menstrual effluence and venous blood. Yet, she notes, “We throw all this valuable information into the trash.” What if menstrual blood could reveal fertility, detect disease and provide a window into women’s health, all without invasive procedures?
Together with biologist Stephen Gire, she founded NextGen Jane in 2014. The company developed and patented methods for collecting and processing blood samples from tampons. Instead of throwing them away, women would seal the tampons in a specially designed collection kit and mail them to the company’s laboratory.
In her lab in California, Tariyal demonstrates how easy extraction is: The patented machine, smaller than an espresso maker, accomplishes the task of retrieving a viable blood sample in seconds. “What’s really cool is we’re getting a biopsy without a speculum or stirrups or any sort of scraping. We’re using the body’s natural expelling of reproductive tissue,” Tariyal emphasises.
NextGen Jane has identified a biomarker panel for endometriosis and Tariyal claims an accuracy rate over 90%. Endometriosis affects roughly one in 10 women of reproductive age. On average, it takes a woman in the US seven to 10 years from her first recognised symptoms until she finds out she has the condition, and confirming the diagnosis typically requires surgery under general anaesthesia. The company is currently conducting a further infertility-focused study to evaluate how the test performs in patients having difficulty conceiving.
Today, academic centres, hospitals and biotechnology companies across the US are now asking: Could menstrual blood become one of medicine’s most valuable diagnostic tools?
Researchers at Stanford Health Care have demonstrated that menstrual blood can be used to detect high-risk strains of human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus responsible for most cervical cancers. The peer-reviewed study suggests period blood could provide a less invasive screening option.
Californian company Qvin has developed a menstrual pad that collects dried blood samples for lab testing. In 2024, the FDA cleared the use of the pad for monitoring hemoglobin A1c — a key marker used to manage diabetes.
In New York, the ROSE (Research OutSmarts Endometriosis) trial at Northwell Health’s Robert S. Boas Centre for Genomics and Human Genetics has spent more than a decade developing a nonsurgical diagnostic test for endometriosis using menstrual cups.
After a decade in development, Abbott, the multinational medical device company, has just released a self-collected tampon PCR test for endometrial cancer. “Women from certain ethnic communities are uncomfortable with the pap smear procedure for cultural reasons,” Tariyal explains. “Often these are the very communities that are underserved and have the highest rates of cervical cancer. At-home tests can open new vistas you wouldn’t have thought of before.”
What was once fringe has become a growing ecosystem. Why did nobody think of this earlier? Perhaps because most inventors and investors are still overwhelmingly male. Tariyal has an array of stories about her efforts to sell her tampon machine to a room full of suits. “One said this only helps half of the population,” she recounts with a half-smile and an eye roll. Another asked if the tests could be adjusted so that men could test their sexual partners for STDs.
Despite these roadblocks, Harvard University supported Tariyal’s efforts by paying for the first clinical trial and patent lawyers. But the first patents were only the beginning.
The science has progressed faster than the business model. “We’re really excited about the data we have for endometriosis diagnosis,” she says. “But it’ll be a longer path to actually bringing that product to market.” The challenge, she argues, is not science, but economics: “Diagnostics is a field that’s hard to fund.”
Perhaps the most surprising development at NextGen Jane is that the company no longer sees diagnosis as its ultimate goal. Over the past several years, researchers have collected more than 2,000 menstrual samples from hundreds of participants, creating what Tariyal calls a “menstrual library” containing extensive genomic, microbiome and clinical data.
The original purpose was to identify disease markers. But the team began noticing something else. “Menstruation is a really unique event in female biology,” Tariyal says. “It is a controlled inflammatory event.” Every month, the body breaks down tissue, clears away cellular debris and rebuilds the uterine lining — remarkably, without leaving scars. “How can the body know how to heal with no fibrosis, no scabbing?” she asks. “Our bodies do it hundreds of times in our lifetime.”
That observation has transformed the company’s ambitions. Using genomic sequencing, NextGen Jane researchers have begun mapping the transition from tissue breakdown to tissue repair. They now apply the resulting framework to diseases beyond reproductive health, including lupus, psoriasis, inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis.
Tariyal’s theory is that many chronic inflammatory diseases represent systems that become stuck somewhere along the path between inflammation and healing. Menstruation, by contrast, may offer a natural blueprint for how healthy tissue repair is supposed to work, not simply because it can diagnose disease, but because it can help scientists understand healing.
Part of the promise lies in the fact that menstrual blood is more than just blood. “You’re actually getting shedding of endometrial lining,” Tariyal explains. That means researchers get to work with multiple cell types, including immune and precancerous cells that are absent from standard blood draws. Together, these components provide a richer picture of what is happening inside the body. “Menstrual blood gives you not just systemic immune responses,” Tariyal says. “It gives you tissue-resident immune response.”
A decade ago, researchers were debating whether menstrual blood had any medical value at all. “There was no literature about menstrual blood when we started,” Tariyal recalls. “We had to create the building blocks from scratch, create a standardised collection kit, etc.” Today, the debate has shifted to which conditions it can detect, how accurately it can do so and how quickly health care systems will adapt.
Tariyal’s personal story has evolved, too. When she launched NextGen Jane, she was trying to answer questions about her own fertility. Now she has two children. The woman who built a company because she couldn’t get straightforward answers about her reproductive health has become both a mother and a leading figure in a rapidly developing area of medical research. For her, the story has come full circle. For the science, it may only be the beginning.
TOP Jaina Jogia coordinates clinical research for NextGen Jane
ABOVE Ridhi Tariyal
PHOTOS NextGen Jane
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