Welcome to issue #165 of FutureFemHealth, (w/c September 28 2026) - your weekly briefing on the global women’s health market.
Health data feels like the theme this week - from new efforts to standardise women’s health data, to using wearables in clinical care and even predicting when a migraine might strike. Plus, $33m for Tiny Health just two weeks after Evvy’s $40m Series B adds to a busy few weeks for the microbiome.
🌟 In this week’s briefing:
🏆 Tiny Health raises $33m as microbiome investment gathers pace
📌 FDA clears at-home maternal monitoring technology
💊 Bayer targets hot flashes in women with breast cancer
🔥 Could your migraine history predict tomorrow’s attack?
Share your news: anna@futurefemhealth.com
Go deeper with FutureFemHealth Pro 🔎
FutureFemHealth Pro now gives you access to 15+ deep dives and analysis features on where the women’s health market is going - not just what happened this week.
Inside the archive, you can explore:
💰 Where the money is moving: Q1 and Q2 funding analysis, plus a look at mergers and acquisitions across the first half of the year.
🔬 Where innovation is heading: continuous hormone monitoring, the vaginal microbiome and the emerging opportunity to get more from tests we already use
📈 Where markets are developing: GLP-1s and women’s health, reimbursement, preventing birth injury and the infrastructure behind better women’s health research
And coming next week: our Q3 2026 funding analysis.
We’ll go beyond the headline funding number to look at where capital actually moved during the quarter, which areas and stages attracted investment, how Q3 changes the 2026 picture so far - and the signals worth watching as we head into the final quarter of the year.
Join FutureFemHealth Pro today to unlock all 15+ analyses immediately - and get our Q3 funding analysis when it lands next week.
💰 Capital flows
📌 US: Tiny Health raises $33m Series B and launches $5m microbiome research programme. What started as gut microbiome testing for babies and mothers has now expanded into gut testing across the lifespan alongside vaginal microbiome testing, with research spanning menopause, IBD, GLP-1s and oncology drug response. The company has now raised an oversubscribed $33m Series B led by B Capital, bringing total funding to $46m, alongside a new $5m Microbiome Research Program. And coming just two weeks after Evvy’s $40m Series B, that’s $73m across two female-founded microbiome companies in a matter of weeks - enough to make the category feel particularly worth watching right now. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)
📌 US: Freyya raises pre-seed funding to bring data into pelvic floor care. Pelvic floor rehabilitation still relies heavily on patients learning how to perform exercises correctly, often with limited objective feedback. Freyya is developing a different approach: using biosensors to measure pelvic floor function and intra-abdominal pressure, with the aim of turning that data into more personalised treatment following childbirth, injury or hormonal changes. The company has now completed its product build and clinical testing, including a study at the University of Utah, and closed an oversubscribed pre-seed round led by Alamo Angels as it prepares for FDA submission and commercial-scale manufacturing. The amount was not disclosed. (Continue reading: Freyya)
📌 NORWAY: Oncoinvent raises $16.2m to target the cancer cells surgery can leave behind. Surgery can remove visible ovarian cancer, but microscopic cancer cells left in the abdominal cavity can contribute to recurrence. Norwegian biotech Oncoinvent is developing Radspherin to target that residual disease directly after surgery. The company has now raised NOK148.5m to fund its ongoing Phase II programme, regulatory work and preparations for Phase III development. (Continue reading: Allsci)
📌 US: Fate Therapeutics gets $15m boost as CAR-T moves deeper into autoimmune disease. The push to take cell therapies beyond cancer and into autoimmune disease continues. California’s regenerative medicine agency CIRM has awarded Fate Therapeutics $15m to support a Phase II trial of its off-the-shelf CAR-T therapy in lupus nephritis - a serious complication of lupus, which disproportionately affects women. Unlike conventional CAR-T therapies, the treatment is designed to be readily available rather than manufactured individually for each patient. (Continue reading: Fate Therapeutics)
🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts
📌 US: Bayer gets Priority Review for non-hormonal hot flash treatment in breast cancer. Managing menopause symptoms can be especially difficult for women being treated for hormone-sensitive breast cancer, where hormone therapy may not be appropriate. The FDA has now granted Priority Review to Bayer’s Lynkuet for moderate-to-severe hot flashes caused by endocrine therapy in HR-positive breast cancer. If approved, it would give women in this group another option for managing one of the most common side effects of their treatment. (Continue reading: Bayer)
📌 US: Marani Health gets FDA clearance to move maternal monitoring into the home. Fetal and maternal monitoring has traditionally meant a trip to hospital or clinic. The FDA has cleared Marani Health’s M•care System and M•wrap wearable, which captures fetal and maternal heart signals and allows clinicians to review them remotely. A commercial launch is planned for 2027, as more of the monitoring that has traditionally happened in hospitals and clinics starts to become possible at home. (Continue reading: Medical Device Network)
📌 US: My Normative expands Persons Project to tackle how women’s health data is recorded and shared. Six months after launch, the Persons Project initiative has grown from nine partners to more than 30 organisations across seven countries - and is moving into the practical work of developing new data standards. One potential use is allowing information already collected through period-tracking apps and wearables to move into healthcare systems in a consistent format, rather than remaining trapped in separate platforms. The project is also developing an open-access framework to create a common language for women’s health data, making information easier to understand and combine even when organisations have collected it differently. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)
🔎 Go deeper: The Persons Project is one of several initiatives I’ve been watching that are trying to fix some of the problems underneath the women’s health research gap - from how data is collected and shared to the tools researchers have to work with it. I looked at what’s changing, and why, in my latest Pro analysis. Read the analysis →
📌 US/FINLAND: Xella Health brings ŌURA data into clinical women’s health platform. 2026 has been the year that’s confirmed wearable data is moving beyond consumer tracking and further into clinical care. Xella Health will integrate ŌURA data including sleep, temperature, resting heart rate, HRV and activity with its own diagnostics and physician-led women’s health platform. We’re collecting more health data than ever through consumer wearables - the challenge now is making it useful to clinicians. (Continue reading: Xella Health)
📌 CANADA/GLOBAL: Flora Fertility and Clue connect fertility tracking with fertility insurance. Period tracking and fertility financing are usually encountered at very different points in the reproductive health journey. A new partnership between Clue and Flora Fertility starts to bring the two together: Clue will introduce users to Flora’s individually owned fertility insurance, while Flora policyholders will receive Clue Plus access. It’s a relatively small partnership, but an interesting link between two parts of the fertility journey that have usually sat quite separately. (Continue reading: Flora Fertility)
🩸 Research and women’s health news
📌 FINLAND: Women’s health conditions estimated to cost economy €15.9bn a year. A new Cost of Illness study from Eir Accelerator and Suncoast Ventures has modelled the economic burden of 50 conditions that affect women solely, disproportionately or differently - putting the annual cost at €15.9bn, equivalent to around €5,580 per woman in Finland. Almost half of the burden sits outside the healthcare system through sickness absence, reduced work capacity and wider employer costs. Mental and neurological conditions together with pelvic and reproductive health account for around 68% of the total modelled cost. (Continue reading: Eir Accelerator / Suncoast Ventures)
📌 GLOBAL: Could your last month of headaches help predict tomorrow’s migraine? A machine-learning study using data from more than 53,000 users of Theranica’s Nerivio migraine app suggests next-day migraine risk may be predictable. The best-performing model correctly identified 80% of migraine days, with 91% of days it flagged as migraine days actually followed by an attack. But perhaps more interesting was what drove the prediction: a person’s headache severity and migraine patterns over the previous month were far more important than current symptoms or weather. It’s another interesting example of how data people are already collecting about their health could start to become useful for looking ahead, rather than simply tracking what has already happened. (Continue reading: Neurology Open Access)
📌 GLOBAL: $15m research push to understand rising breast cancer rates in younger women. Estée Lauder is committing $15m to a new five-year global research initiative with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation focused on rising breast cancer incidence among younger women. Researchers will investigate what is driving the increase - spanning biology and genetics to environmental factors - as well as opportunities to improve prevention, earlier detection and treatment. (Continue reading: Cosmetics Business)
📆 Save the date
📌 Registration is now open for the Women’s Health Europe Forum
The Women’s Health Europe Forum, organized by Femtech France, is now open for registration ahead of its inaugural edition on November 27 in Paris. The day will bring together 200+ key players from across the European women’s health ecosystem. Two calls for applications are also live for startups specifically: the Startup Pitch, offering 10 startups a spot on the main stage, and two Corporate Challenges with PiLeJe and Garmin Health, each selecting one startup to collaborate directly with the partner.
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
