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Dec 5, 2025, 08:59

Kate Gunther: Rimegepant Shows Antiproliferative Effects in Endometriosis Models

Kate Gunther, Doctoral Student at UNSW, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“New publication alert!

It’s no secret that endometriosis research has been chronically underfunded, which has slowed the development of new and especially non-hormonal treatments. This makes drug repurposing a powerful strategy, allowing us to rapidly evaluate safe, existing medicines for therapeutic potential.
Our new study applies this approach to ROR1, a receptor that we found to be consistently upregulated in endometriosis at both the transcript and protein level.

Key Highlights

Using a drug repurposing platform, we identified candidates predicted to target ROR1.
Rimegepant, a clinically approved migraine drug with an established safety profile, showed the strongest antiproliferative effect in 12Z endometriotic epithelial cells.
In patient-derived organoids, rimegepant produced concentration-dependent and patient-specific reductions in viability and organoid size.

Why it matters

This is the first evidence in human-derived endometriosis models supporting rimegepant as a potential non-hormonal therapy. It also demonstrates how repurposing-focused, translational workflows can accelerate progress in an underfunded field.

This work is a testament to collaborative projects which integrate preclinical, clinical and patient perspectives. I’m very grateful to my collaborators Dongli Liu, Gill Stannard, Nikola Bowden, Caroline Ford and those beyond the LinkedIn sphere for their contributions, and the patients who made this work possible.

Read it here.”

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