Welcome to issue #162 of FutureFemHealth, (w/c September 7 2026) - your weekly briefing on the global women’s health market.
There’s clearly a backlog of funding announcements held over from the quieter summer months, because this week’s issue is jam-packed with capital flowing into women’s health - from a major consumer health round in India to inhaled IVF drugs and a mainstream bank launching its own dedicated women’s health fund.
🌟 In this week’s briefing:
🏆 Mainstream Norwegian bank DNB launches a dedicated women’s health fund
🩸 A €15m bet on spotting pregnancy complications in the first trimester
💨 Could IVF injections become inhalers?
🧬 CAR-T’s autoimmune push hits a safety setback
Share your news: anna@futurefemhealth.com
💰 Capital flows
📌 NORWAY: DNB launches dedicated women’s health fund. Women’s health is moving further into mainstream investment, with Norwegian banking giant DNB launching a fund dedicated to the market. Portfolio manager Anesa Mulabecirovic Sahnoun will lead the fund and says she wants to demonstrate that money can be made from women’s health and that improving women’s health benefits society more broadly. (Continue reading: Dagens Næringsliv)
📌 INDIA: Nua brings in around $14m in fresh capital as part of $50m Series C transaction. What started as a period care brand has grown into a broader women’s wellness business spanning maternity, skincare and intimate care, alongside digital products including a period tracker - and now reaches more than three million women and girls each month. The deal combines around $14m of fresh capital with a much larger secondary component providing partial exits for earlier investors, taking the total transaction to $50m. Peak XV Partners and Filter Capital led the round. (Continue reading: AfriWallStreet)
📌 SPAIN: iPremom raises €15m seed for earlier detection of pregnancy complications. What if the risk of conditions such as preeclampsia could be identified in the first trimester, giving clinicians more time to intervene? That’s the premise behind iPremom’s MaiRa platform, which uses a blood test to look for early molecular signals of pregnancy complications. Its €15m seed will support clinical validation and commercial rollout, led by Amadeus Capital Partners. (Continue reading: EU-Startups)
📌 AUSTRALIA: GonGlobal secures A$1.2m to explore an alternative to IVF injections - inhaled medicines. So much IVF innovation focuses on diagnostics, embryo selection and clinic efficiency, but this idea will strike a chord with anyone who has actually gone through the experience. GonGlobal’s OVULAIR aims to deliver fertility medicines through a nebuliser instead of repeated injections, using inhalation technology licensed from RMIT University. The company has secured A$1.2m from RMIT, Innovation Victoria and a private investor to advance the technology. (Continue reading: RMIT)
📌 JAPAN: SiccaNova raises ¥1.25bn (c.US$8.1m) Series A for a potential Sjögren’s treatment. Another example of women’s health investment that doesn’t necessarily carry the label: more than 90% of people with Sjögren’s syndrome are women, according to investor MPower Partners, whose WPower Fund backed the round specifically for its potential to address women’s unmet health needs. SiccaNova is developing an oral small-molecule treatment for severe dry mouth associated with the autoimmune condition, with the funding supporting development towards the clinic. (Continue reading: PR Times)
📌 ITALY: Tensive secures up to €20m for breast reconstruction technology. Breast cancer innovation doesn’t end with treatment. Tensive is developing REGENERA, a bioresorbable scaffold designed to support breast reconstruction following lumpectomy, and has secured a convertible venture-debt facility of up to €20m from the European Investment Bank. The funding will support clinical development, CE marking, manufacturing and eventual commercialisation. (Continue reading: Tensive)
📌 DENMARK: Mensis secures DKK 760,000 to develop continuous hormone monitoring biosensor. Another contender in the race to move hormone testing beyond occasional blood-test snapshots. Danish startup Mensis is developing a wearable biosensor designed to collect hormonal data continuously and has secured DKK 760,000 (around US$120,000) from Innovation Fund Denmark’s Innofounder programme, giving its co-founders funding to work full-time on the technology for the next year. (Continue reading: Mensis)
📌 CANADA/US: The Fertility Partners sells US clinic to IVI RMA to double down on Canada. Fertility clinic consolidation continues, but this deal sees one major network narrowing its geographic focus while another expands. Canada’s largest fertility clinic group TFP has sold Illume Fertility, which operates across Connecticut and New York, to global reproductive medicine group IVI RMA. TFP says the sale will allow it to focus its capital and growth plans on building its Canadian network, while Illume becomes part of IVI RMA’s expanding US footprint. (Continue reading: The Fertility Partners)
🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts
📌 US: MiSalud takes employer women’s health benefits to an often-overlooked workforce. The employer women’s health boom has often focused on professional workforces with comprehensive insurance. MiSalud Health is taking a different route with a bilingual programme for frontline and Spanish-speaking workers spanning reproductive health through to menopause. Crucially, part-time and seasonal employees can access it regardless of insurance status - widening the employer women’s health model to workers often missed by more premium digital health providers. (Continue reading: MiSalud Health)
📌 GLOBAL: Safety concerns hit two major CAR-T programmes targeting autoimmune disease. The idea of using CAR-T to effectively “reset” the immune system has become one of the more closely watched new approaches to severe autoimmune disease. So simultaneous setbacks at two major programmes is significant. Novartis has paused some trials following three patient deaths from severe immune reactions, while Bristol Myers Squibb has separately halted enrolment in autoimmune studies while it reviews inflammatory events. The affected programmes span lupus, lupus nephritis, systemic sclerosis, myositis, Sjögren’s disease and multiple sclerosis - several diseases that disproportionately affect women. (Continue reading: BioPharma Dive)
📌 ISRAEL/EUROPE: Pulsenmore completes European registration for at-home IVF ultrasound. Another part of fertility treatment could be moving out of the clinic and into the home. Pulsenmore can now market its FC ultrasound system in Europe, allowing women undergoing IVF or fertility preservation to perform their own scans at home to monitor follicle development and endometrial thickness, with images shared with their care team. It marks the company’s first expansion beyond prenatal care into fertility. (Continue reading: Pulsenmore)
📌 EUROPE: Women’s health organisations join forces for a new Europe-wide innovation forum. Europe’s women’s health ecosystem remains fragmented across countries, but efforts to connect it are becoming more formal. The first Women’s Health Europe Forum will take place in Paris this November, led by Femtech France alongside organisations from Portugal, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and more. Startups, researchers, institutions and industry will come together, with corporate-backed innovation challenges from Garmin Health and PiLeJe running alongside the event. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)
🩸 Research and women’s health news
📌 AUSTRALIA/US/ITALY: Cancer cell therapy technology is being explored for endometriosis. A new research collaboration will test whether a type of cell therapy being developed to target cancer cells could also have potential in endometriosis. Cartherics and the Zucker Institute will explore the approach across several diseases including triple-negative breast cancer and endometriosis - an early example of advanced therapeutic technology crossing over into a disease still badly in need of new treatment options. (Continue reading: Cartherics)
📌 US: One in three young women has never been screened for cervical cancer. Despite decades of progress in cervical cancer prevention, a new JAMA Network study points to a worrying shift in screening: one in three young women has never been screened, with the proportion reporting no previous screening rising substantially between 2005 and 2023. This is the type of stat that reminds us that developing better tests is only part of the challenge - getting women to use them is another. (Continue reading: Inside Precision Medicine)
📄 Policy watch: risks and opportunities
📌 AUSTRALIA: Work begins on the country’s first national perimenopause and menopause clinical guidelines. Backed by A$2.9m over three years, the “living” guidance will be led by the Australian Living Evidence Collaboration at Monash University and updated as evidence evolves. The move could improve consistency in clinical practice and prescribing, while building on Australia’s Medicare-supported menopause assessments and subsidised treatments to embed menopause care more firmly within mainstream health infrastructure. (Continue reading: Australian Government)
📌 GLOBAL: Menstruation and menopause get their first international workplace standard. Workplace support for menstrual and menopausal health is moving beyond individual employer policies and national guidance. New ISO 45010 gives organisations an international framework for developing policies and practices around both - creating common infrastructure that employers, consultants and benefits providers can now build against. (Continue reading: ISO)
📆 Save the date
📌 Women’s Health Horizons London Autumn Summit: London, September 22. Join more than 400 leaders at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to explore how ambition in women’s health can be turned into meaningful, system-wide progress. 🎟️ Secure your ticket
📌 10 Years of FemTech: A Fireside Chat with Ida Tin: virtual, September 17. Ten years after Ida Tin coined the term FemTech, she will join FemTech Focus founder Dr Brittany Barreto to discuss where the category began, how it has evolved and what its next decade should look like. Includes a live audience Q&A too! 🎟️ Register here.
That’s all for this week! If you’ve missed any previous briefings catch them all at futurefemhealth.com and do make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and you can connect with me directly on LinkedIn.
Anna
