Women’s health is facing growing opposite winds, despite the leap in venture capital investments
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The field of women’s health has a long way to go through persistent deficits in research and treatment. The current conditions that affect women such as endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome remain poorly understood, while maternal mortality in the United States remains higher than in similar countries.
However, there are green shoots. Startups focused on the health of women led to a record funding fund funding in 2024, extending recent momentum.
Silicon Valley Bank researchers, who followed the financing of startups, tabuated $ 2.6 billion in female health investment last month last year last year, against $ 1.7 billion in 2023. In particular, biopharmat investments make 34% of total solutions, which indicates an increase in interest in new treatments compared to the sector in “health” solutions.
“Women’s health has continued to grow,” said Raysa Bousleiman, vice-president of life sciences and health capital relationships at SVB. The total of last year is “the highest that we have ever seen”.
Conditions that only disproportionately affect women have long been neglected by the life science industry. But it starts to change as more venture capital takes place in the health of women. And although reproduction care remains the higher objective of venture capital dollars, other areas such as menopause and maternal health also receive more attention.
“The results of maternal health care is still not perfect for women in the United States, and therefore there is always the need [for innovation]”Said Bousleiman.
One of the notable companies to collect funds last year was Comanche organic. Biotechnology attracted $ 75 million from NEA, Atlas Venture and F-Prime capital, among other things, to advance treatment for preeclampsia, or high blood pressure linked to pregnancy that can cause complications for the mother and the fetus.
Companies also recognize how women’s health can include other better known conditions. The largest pharmaceutical companies generate more than 60% of their income from treatments for conditions, such as autoimmune, heart and bone diseases, which unique or disproportionate women, according to a report by the McKinsey Health Institute.
“With this growing recognition of health moments influence women differently from men, you are starting to increase the scope,” said Bousleiman. “And because the scope increases, it depicts a better image for the health of women.”
Government’s opposite
But the prospects can be more trembling in the academic world, which is so often the source of ideas that flourish later in future drugs.
The Biden administration launched the White House initiative in women’s health research at the end of 2023 to help stimulate investments in the field. But while $ 113 million was distributed between startups, universities and health institutions, the initiative began at the end of the Biden presidency and has a little clear future under President Donald Trump.
“As it started, they lost the election – and it’s over,” said Sabra Klein, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Codirector of the Johns Hopkins Center for Women’s Health, Sex and Gender Research.
“A year is not a dedicated investment.”
The Trump administration has also implemented several actions which could still hinder the already neglected research areas or hinder the adoption of existing treatments.
“The field of women’s health is already a bad thing, so we cannot really allow ourselves to slow down more,” said Sabrina Johnson, CEO of the women’s focused on health, Daré Biosciences.
The Trump administration has reduced the financing of major research and research studies involving the National Institute of Health, alarms for industry leaders, investors and researchers.
In April, for example, the administration said it would withdraw federal funding from Women’s Health Initiative, one of the largest current health studies that assess menopause, osteoporosis and nutrition. The administration then returned back, but the reports indicate that funding could still be in limbo.
“It is enormous that the restrictions that are implemented do not harm women’s health care,” said Marcelle Cedars, reproductive endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco Health and former president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
Dei restrictions
Research and funding for this were also assigned by the order of Trump to end diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, in federal programs. Although research on transgender health is the main target of the administration, its policy to recognize only two sexes has hampered studies beyond the health of women to use the bad language.
Orders could further slow down public funding for women’s health research. A study presented last year by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicines revealed that, total funding for subsidies from the National Institutes of Health between 2013 and 2023, only 8.8% were devoted to women’s health, a deficit in the Biden administration initiative was supposed to remedy.
“We cannot devote more than 9% of our research efforts to take care of 51% of the population; this is a problem,” said Cedars.
And the United States is already late when it comes to assessing sex and sex in clinical trials, because clinical trials funded by NIHs were not required to involve women before 1993, leaving a huge deficit of information. Food and Drug Administration has implemented advice to promote diversity in clinical trials, but this can now conflict with new Trump administration policies.
Government reductions also have an impact on the private sector, as pharmaceutical companies adapt to the layoffs and restructuring of agencies that regulate them.
Thousands of jobs have been eliminated by the Secretary of Health and Social Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr, including the FDA. The HHS said that agency inspectors and examiners would not be affected, but some fear that restructuring has an impact on the quantity of support and advice that the FDA can offer to companies.
“I think [the headwinds] Perhaps almost particularly pronounced in the health of women, because there have been so few innovations and products that have crossed the FDA. Any kind of slowdown or disruption can have a really difficult impact, “said Johnson.
For researchers like Cedars and Klein who have devoted many years to their work, disturbing policies are discouraging. But for those who start, interference could dissuade them from conducting research in the United States
“If you are four years old to decimate this pipeline [of researchers]You will need decades to rebuild it, “said Cedars.
Cedars and Klein hope that the increases in private financing for women’s health biotechnologies will continue to support the necessary early science type which is already “underfunced” and “under-acquisse”. Some investors are already trying.
“It is incredibly important to focus on little money in women’s health research, especially on the part of NIH.” Addition of cedars.
“It could be a call to the private sector to invest earlier in a pipeline,” said Klein. “It is a more risky investment, but without it, we lose our position in the world as biotechnology leaders [and] Biomedical leaders. »»
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