Friederike Luking Jayes

Inst. Training Prgm or CMEProgram Coordinator · Awarded by Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development · 2020 - 2025

Peer group psychosocial mentoring and mechanisms of change contributing to personal gains and objective career outcomes for racially underrepresented early career biomedical researchers

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill · 2019 - 2025

Evaluating the Safety of Smart Injectable Drug Delivery for Uterine Fibroid Therapy

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by North Carolina Central University · 2021 - 2023

Fellowships, Gifts, and Supported Research

Developing a new treatment for uterine fibroids - local injection of purified Clostridial collagenase. · February 2024 - January 2025 PI · Awarded by: Charles Hammond Research Fund Award · $12,000.00 Uterine fibroids occur in an estimated 26 million women of reproductive age. These non-cancerous tumors are associated with infertility and can cause serious and life altering heavy bleeding and pain in women worldwide. Uterine fibroids are the leading cause of hysterectomies in the United States and cost US Healthcare up to 34.4 billion dollars annually. Fibroids are also associated with infertility. In Black women, uterine fibroids are 2-3 times more common compared to white women, and they occur at an earlier age in black women, making the need for uterine sparing treatments an even higher priority in this community. The only definitive treatment is hysterectomy. Minimally invasive therapies that preserve fertility and don’t require a hospital visit do not exist. Exiting uterine preserving procedures involve major equipment, high cost, and specialized expertise and are not offered or not accessible to many women. Systemic delivery of drugs, including hormonal, has been problematic due to systemic side effects. There is a clear need for new treatment options that are uterine preserving, minimal invasive, and accessible to women in all communities. We have collaborated to develop such a new treatment. Collagen is the major component in these stiff and often bulky uterine fibroids. We have shown in ex-vivo experiments, that injection of fibroids with a highly purified collagenase (from Clostridium Histolyticum) will degrade the collagen and considerably soften fibrotic tissues. A phase-1 clinical trial proved that local delivery under ultrasound guidance using IVF needles is feasible, and in addition to softening the fibroid tissue, it could also lead to a reduction in pain

Engineering Smart Injectable Drug Delivery Theranostics for Uterine Fibroids · January 1, 2019 - December 31, 2019 Co-Principal Investigator · Awarded by: Duke Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) · $56,131.00 Friederike Jayes, DVM, PhD, and Darlene K. Taylor, PhD have been awarded a Duke-NCCU collaborative award for 2019. The research award will advance studies to deliver drugs via LiquoGel™ to potentially soften and treat uterine fibroid tumors. More than seven out of ten women have fibroids by age 50. The disease burden is larger for black women as they have more fibroids earlier in life when many still desire to have children. The targeted technology could transform uterine fibroid therapy for women suffering from this disease who want to keep their uterus..