# Botanical derived progestins and their impact on women's health

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO · 2024 · $391,755

## Abstract

Botanical dietary supplement use has skyrocketed over the last ten years. One significant portion of this market
is herbal supplements targeted toward women, who commonly use them to treat their gynecological ailments,
not only for their cost-effective advantage or affordability, but also for their health benefits. Progesterone is an
endogenous hormone and synthetic progestins are used therapeutically for a variety of conditions including
prevention of uterine hyperplasia, which increases the risk of uterine cancer, uterine bleeding, endometriosis,
and prevention of preterm birth. Selective progesterone receptor (PR) modulators are also used in the treatment
of prevention of fibroids, which occur in 80% of women. At a national level, treating benign gynecological
conditions is expensive, with an annual cost of between $13–$22 billion. Thus, studying alternative therapies
that women are already widely consuming is significant. However, a major technological and scientific gap
exists: while botanicals are being widely consumed and contain compounds that are relatively safe, these
compounds have not been identified or rigorously biologically evaluated, which is an area of emphasis for NCCIH
(NOT-AT-21-006) that is specifically addressed in this application. Phytoprogestins need to be identified and
studied in order to apply them for safe and effective use in uterine disorders. To address this, our team laid the
groundwork for this new subfield of chemodietary prevention through the identification and biological
characterization of molecules from dogwood, vitex, red clover, and yucca, as these contained compounds that
modified PR signaling. In the current proposal our goal is to identify the structures of compounds in several other
commonly consumed botanicals that modify PR signaling so that they can be examined for safety and efficacy
in preclinical chemodietary prevention models, including prevention of fibroids, preterm birth and uterine
hyperplasia. We aim to test our hypothesis that commonly consumed botanicals used to improve women’s health
contain compounds that regulate PR signaling via three integrated aims. We will 1) Isolate and characterize the
structures of phytoprogestin natural products from validated plant material through use of a cell-based PRE-
luciferase assays and measure active compound abundance in commercial products; 2) Confirm that isolated
compounds bind to a receptor, determine if they function as agonists, antagonists, or potentiators, determine if
they modify off-target receptors, and refine their genome-wide transcriptional action using RNA seq; and 3)
Confirm that chemodietary prevention using phytoprogestin-containing botanicals reduces preterm birth, uterine
hyperplasia or blunts fibroid growth. Since little is known about phytoprogestin content and their associated
biological activities from botanicals widely consumed by women, this study presents a profound opportunity to
inform the treatment of gynecologic disord...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10833205
- **Project number:** 5R01AT008824-07
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO
- **Principal Investigator:** Joanna E Burdette
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $391,755
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2016-05-01 → 2028-02-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10833205

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10833205, Botanical derived progestins and their impact on women's health (5R01AT008824-07). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10833205. Licensed CC0.

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