The Society for Women’s Health Research, or SWHR, announced it will present the "Women’s Health Visionary Award” to Teresa Woodruff, MSU Research Foundation Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology.
The recognition honors Woodruff’s contributions to women’s health research in endocrinology, ovarian biology and reproductive science, as well as her leadership surrounding the sex as a biological variable policy within the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, and integration of women’s health research across the NIH.
Woodruff will receive the award at SWHR’s annual awards gala on April 30 in Washington D.C.
In a statement, SWHR highlighted Woodruff’s contributions to women’s health:
"Dr. Woodruff is responsible for many discoveries, three of which have changed our understanding of fundamental reproductive processes and others that led to a new field of medicine. Woodruff and her collaborators discovered the remarkable ‘zinc spark’ which allows an assessment of egg quality in a non-invasive way; she was the first to mature ovarian follicles leading to live births of mice outside the body and fertilizable human eggs; she used this technology to develop pathways for cancer patients receiving life-preserving but fertility-threatening treatments to have a family, a field of medicine known as ‘oncofertility’.
Additionally, she created the first three-dimensional (3D) printed ovarian ‘bioprosthetic’ which produced the first live birth from a printed organ; cloned the inhibin and activin subunits and defined the molecular basis of negative feedback in the reproductive system; and reconstructed an ovarian cycle outside the body in a system now known as EVATAR/Lattice.
Woodruff championed the inclusion of sex as a biological variable in federal grants and in the process, created new areas of education in the reproductive sciences. She was awarded the Presidential Award for Mentoring in Science, Technology, and Math by President Obama and the National Medal of Science by President Biden. Woodruff is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Inventors, and the Guggenheim Foundation."
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