Lab mice can now have periods like humans

“Efforts to study the female reproductive system have long been set back by societal stigma—but also by the problematic fact that most laboratory animals don’t menstruate. Now, researchers have engineered mice that get a period in response to certain drugs, according to a preprint posted to bioRxiv this month.”

“In the new work, Harvard University reproductive biologist Kara McKinley and colleagues engineered standard lab mice’s endometrium to react to signals at work in menstruating animals. They equipped the cells with a receptor protein that, when activated by a drug, amplifies their sensitivity to calcium, a trigger of decidualization.”

News article may have paywall but the preprint itself doesn’t. The preprint in question: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.08.681007v1