Spearheading Reproductive Science Research

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This story was originally published in the October 2025 issue of the Breakthroughs newsletter. 

In 1974, Neena Schwartz, PhD, the William Deering Professor of Endocrinology, launched Northwestern’s Program for Reproductive Research to catalyze reproductive biology 
research and collaboration across the university. 

The program eventually became the Center for Reproductive Science (CRS), with Schwartz serving as founding director, followed by former co-directors Kelly Mayo, PhD, and Teresa Woodruff, PhD.  

Today, CRS has more than 300 faculty members and trainees from across Northwestern participating in collaborative reproductive science research, formal educational training, 
and event programming, is led by co-directors Francesca Duncan, PhD, the Thomas J. Watkins Memorial Professor of Reproductive Science, and Julie Kim, PhD, the Susy Y. Hung Research Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Division of Reproductive Science in Medicine

“The great thing about Northwestern is that there are experts in every field that you can think of here,” Kim said. “I can collaborate with them, go to the experts and ask why is this happening? How does this happen? How can we measure this most effectively?”  

The field of reproductive science is multidisciplinary at its core, encompassing endocrinology, gonad development, gametogenesis and embryogenesis, and reproductive tract biology.  

This research ultimately informs the understanding of fertility and infertility, contraception, infectious diseases, pregnancy, fetal origins of adult diseases, transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, aging and reproductive diseases.  

Francesca Duncan and Julie Kim
 Francesca Duncan, PhD, and Julie Kim, PhD, are co-directors of the Center for Reproductive Science. 

The aim of CRS, according to Duncan and Kim, is to broaden the scope of reproductive science research and improve the understanding of how reproductive health plays a key role in overall health.  

“We’ve very much broadened reproductive science and have really tried to highlight the range of science that’s happening at Northwestern across departments, across disciplines,” Duncan said. 

Broadening Reproductive Science  

Reproductive science research conducted by CRS faculty members falls under six categories: development and differentiation; fertility and aging; disease and infection; neuro and endocrine actions; bioengineering; and genetics, genomics and epigenomics.  

This work includes a recent study led by Duncan, which discovered new molecular mechanisms that lead specialized immune cells, called multinucleated giant cells (MNGCs), to cause ovarian aging and functional decline.  

“This paper really marks, I think, the first time that these particular cells that we know are involved in chronic inflammation have been defined at such high resolution, and that really opens up a lot of research opportunities to look at what is causing these cells to appear but also what are their consequences,” Duncan said. “I think this really pushes that needle forward from merely an observation that MNGCs are always in these old ovaries to beginning to understand what they might be doing, if they’re a good thing or a bad thing, and could they be targeted to improve ovarian function.”  

Duncan’s laboratory was also recently awarded a three million dollar grant from the Gates Foundation to continue their work in identifying novel biological targets to develop non-hormonal contraceptives for women in developing countries through the Ovarian Contraceptive Discovery Initiative. 

Mazhar Adli, PhD, is the Thomas J. Watkins Memorial Professor of Tumor Genomics and professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Additional research led by Mazhar Adli, PhD, the Thomas J. Watkins Memorial Professor of Tumor Genomics and professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Division of Reproductive Science in Medicine, has investigated chemotherapy resistance in ovarian cancer, which occurs in most ovarian cancer cases.  

Published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Adli’s work found that the protein KEAP1 is a key regulator of PRMT5, an enzyme known for its role in regulating gene expression and was previously shown by Adli to be abundant in chemotherapy-resistant ovarian cancer cells.  

By combining PRMT5 inhibitors with chemotherapy drugs, Adli’s team found that the combination treatment increased cancer cell death and reduced tumor growth in mice with ovarian cancer, suggesting this treatment strategy may be a promising therapy option for ovarian cancer.  

“We have shown that this is a really therapeutically exploitable target, and we have several good inhibitors for this one. We show that we need to combine these inhibitors with existing chemo to make them really therapeutically relevant. There are currently clinical trials underway testing the inhibitors alone, and we think testing them alone may not be as effective,” Adli said. 

Another recent study led by Kim, whose research investigates the development of uterine diseases to identify new treatments, discovered that uterine serous carcinoma tumors in Black patients express more aggressive and immunosuppressive features than tumors in white patients.  

Specifically, Kim found that Black patients demonstrated increased expression of genes associated with tumor aggressiveness – notably PAX8, which is commonly upregulated in other endometrial cancers and in ovarian cancer – compared to white patients. 

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may inform new targeted therapeutic strategies to improve disparities in patient outcomes.  

“Our environment, our behaviors, societal stressors, they all impact us psychologically as well as physically. If the environmental insults are chronic, or if they’re too much to bear, it can have an impact on health,” Kim said. “We are seeing differences in these tumors in terms of the genes that they express, in terms of the immune system and the immune response.” 

Community and Collaboration 

Since its founding, CRS has been at the forefront of reproductive science, from basic research on cellular and molecular mechanisms to physiological integration across organ systems to clinical practices that impact fertility and health.  

“I think what makes Northwestern unique is that we have a critical mass of researchers in this space who’ve been focused on reproductive science historically,” Duncan said. “I don’t know that there’s many programs where there is a community that has been gathering together for so long, especially in a field that’s so small.” 

Duncan said that bench-to-bedside research is a key pillar of the CRS, which will help widen the impact and understanding of reproductive science overall.  

“It’s an exciting time to be in this area because I think there’s much more societal awareness about the importance of this topic, that it’s not just about how an organ system is important for reproducing, but that it’s also important for overall health,” Duncan said.