The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences along with the College of Veterinary Medicine is home to a new $7.5 million Center for Reproduction and Infertility Research that, over the next five years, will support research on human infertility—a disease that affects 6.1 million men and women of child-bearing age.
The new center is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a division of the National Institutes of Health. It is one of 15 specialized centers nationwide aimed at improving human reproductive health by encouraging the rapid transfer of basic research into clinical practice.
At U of I, a multidisciplinary team of basic and clinical scientists will focus on understanding the mechanisms that control maternal-fetal interactions during early pregnancy. They will also identify factors that underlie infertility in women suffering from endometriosis, a common gynecologic disorder.
The center will draw upon expertise in LAS's School of Molecular and Cellular Biology and the Department of Veterinary Biosciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine. Clinicians from the Emory University Medical School and a molecular geneticist from Baylor College of Medicine also will contribute to the effort. Milan Bagchi, professor of molecular and integrative physiology, is the center's new director.
