💌 Issue 75: FemTech shares in $110m | Vara takes AI breast screening to India | Bayer partners for real-time hormone monitoring
+ lots more in your weekly round-up of women's health and FemTech news
Hi! Welcome to issue #75 of FutureFemHealth, here to bring you your weekly news about women’s health innovation and FemTech (w/c 30 October 2024).
🌟 Coming up today we’ve got:
🏆 FemTech start-ups share in $110m Sprint for Women’s Health
📌 Vara snaps $8.9m to expand AI breast cancer screening tech to India
✅ Bayer partners with Impli for real-time hormone monitoring for IVF and beyond
❤️ Wisp launches weight care vertical to support women with hormonal imbalances.
Want to share your news from the world of FemTech and women’s health innovation? Let me know at anna@futurefemhealth.com
🏆 FemTech start-ups share in $110m Sprint for Women's Health
First Lady Jill Biden has announced that 23 organisations from around the world will receive a slice of $110m in funding as awardees of the Sprint for Women’s Health.
The funding, from the Advance Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), has been hotly-anticipated since its announcement earlier this year. It aims to address critical unmet challenges in women’s health, champion transformative innovations and tackle health conditions that uniquely or disproportionately affect women.
Notably, more than 70% of award recipients are organisations led by women and nearly a third have never received government funding before.
Projects in line for funding include:
a first-of-a-kind non-invasive endometriosis blood test (from Aspira Women’s Health)
a novel, affordable wearable sweat sensing system to measure and map chronic pain (from California Institute of Technology)
a first-of-a-kind home-based, low-cost, fingerstick test for early detection of preeclampsia (from Gravidas Diagnostics)
Other awardees includes FemTech start-up Daré Bioscience, who will receive $10m in funding over two years for its potential first-in-category treatment for human papillomavirus (HPV)-related cervical disease.
And Celmatix will receive $3.5m over two years to fund development of its therapeutic aimed at controlling the timing and rate of decline in ovarian function that occurs in women during perimenopause and menopause - ultimately enablling women to proactively manage their lifelong health.
“I believe that extending ovarian function throughout the modern lifespan could be the single most important medical breakthrough of this century,” said Dr. Piraye Yurttas Beim, founder and CEO of Celmatix.
The potential impact of all of these initiatives is easy to see (and this is just a handful of the 23 awards granted - you can read our full breakdown here).
But here’s the kicker - 1,700 applicants bid for funding from the Sprint for Women’s Health.
Which means just 1.35% of those who applied were successful.
And, as said before, while we can and should celebrate initiatives like these awards, we can also say - there’s so much more that’s needed.
Full story: FutureFemHealth
💰 Funding, deals and investment news
📌 GERMANY: Vara snaps $8.9m to expand AI breast cancer screening tech to India. Founded in 2018, Vara’s software is already integrated into Germany’s National Breast Cancer Screening Program, benefiting over 80,000 women monthly. It will now further expand in India, partnering with local screening clinics to provide breast cancer screenings to the billion women who do not have access to government screening programmes or expensive private screening. Investment came from family offices and Berlin-based healthcare investor IBB Ventures. (Continue reading: Tech funding news)
🌟 More news from this week
📌 Bayer partners with Impli for real-time hormone monitoring. At the moment, women undergoing fertility treatment often require regular blood tests – sometimes daily – which is inconvenient, stressful, and often isn't sufficiently accurate for optimal IVF. As an alternative, Impli’s biosensor is implanted under the skin to continuously monitor hormones and help guide decision-making for egg retrieval and embryo transfer. It can also monitor pregnancy development. Bayer meanwhile, sees potential beyond IVF - anticipating applications for stress, sleep, weight management, cardiovascular health, women’s health and bone health. Partnership terms were not disclosed. (Continue reading: Pharmaphorum)
📌 US: Wisp launches weight care vertical to support women with hormonal imbalances. Wisp is the largest dedicated women’s telehealth provider in the US and currently serves over 1.2 million patients. It’s announced it is now moving into weight care with the launch of four weight care solutions - including GLP-1 medications - to support women struggling with hormonal conditions such as perimenopause, menopause, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), and endometriosis. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)
📌 Maven is swapping out its finance chief as the women’s health unicorn looks ahead to an IPO. Maven recently announced a $125m Series F round at a $1.7billion valuation. Now a source has revealed that a new finance head will be joining the scale-up, with relevant experience leading a public company. Could this signal a potential IPO on the horizon? (Continue reading: Business Insider)
📌 Lindus Health introduces its ‘all-in-one women’s health CRO’ for clinical trials in women’s health space. Women have historically been underrepresented in clinical research leading to significant treatment disparities. Lindus Health aims to remove the ‘bottleneck’ of slow clinical trials with end-to-end solutions and promises to recruit a diverse cohort of participants twice as fast as traditional trial partners. This new ‘all-in-one’ package includes recruitment, admin, guidance in regulatory requirements and a management tech platform. (Continue reading: City Biz)
🩸 Research and women’s health news
📌 Neuroscientist finds her brain shrinks while taking birth control. While oral contraceptives are generally considered safe, their effects on the brain remain understudied. Tired of waiting for the gender data gap to be filled, scientist Carina Heller scanned her own brain 75 times in a year (for 90 minutes each time!) to discover the effects for herself. Heller found her brain volume decreased, though returned after medication was stopped. More research is now needed, as it isn’t clear what effect, if any, this fluctuation has on brain function. (Continue reading: Nature)
📌 UK: Fertility rate in England and Wales drops to new low. Financial pressures and societal changes are behind the drop, which saw 591,072 babies born in 2023, fewer than in any year since 1977. The average age of new parents has increased to 33.8 for fathers and 30.9 for mothers. (Continue reading: BBC)
📄 Govt & policy news
📌 US: ‘The million-dollar question of this election’: Women’s health startups are confronting a shifting legal landscape. With less than a week to go until the presidential election, founders of women’s health startups are perhaps feeling doubly invested in the result of this close-run race. Many say that another Trump victory will create uncertainty for reproductive health startups, from period trackers to online abortion clinics to embryo banks. (Continue reading: Business Insider)
📌 AUSTRALIA: How did the word ‘digital’ only get mentioned once in the menopause Senate inquiry recommendations? A 169-page document, released in September, was largely celebrated as the outcome of a long inquiry into menopause care in Australia. But this opinion piece calls for greater recognition of digital health’s potential in women’s healthcare. Writer Georgie Drury says that the women’s health gap will be exacerbated if Government doesn’t put to use digital health solutions - a number of which are already ‘ready to go’. (Continue reading: Women’s Agenda)
Thanks for reading and see you next time! If you’ve missed any previous newsletter issues catch them all at futurefemhealth.com
Before you go: Would you like to support FutureFemHealth through sponsorship and get your brand in front of thousands of professionals, founders and investors in women’s health? I’m taking bookings from December onwards. For more info and a copy of our media pack drop me a line: anna@futurefemhealth.com