Issue #100- Connecting & building

Happy FemTech Friday !  

 London has been so good to me! 🇬🇧 Even though I haven’t had time for any touristy things, I’ve been busy attending events and meeting founders every single day. I’m still buzzing to connect with so many inspiring women and listen to their incredible stories—especially women of colour building in FemTech and women’s health.

The world really is such a small place. It feels surreal to see my virtual connections come to life!

If 20-year-old me could see this now, she would never believe we’re building this global community to support women’s health. I am forever grateful and privileged to follow my passion every day and help shape the future of women’s health! Follow me on my IG for all the updates ! ✨

Congratulations Marina Gerner,  for your book launch! It was great to connect with the London FemTech community. Seeing more books highlighting female health is so exciting— FemTech is truly coming into the spotlight, and it’s definitely something to celebrate! 

Having launched my own book last year, I can feel the excitement and I truly appreciate the contributions of other women pushing the space forward. Go buy the book – Purchase here

Thank you for supporting our newsletter! If you’re a women’s health founder, a product or marketing expert, a passionate advocate for women’s health, or a business leader aiming to create the next big innovation in femtech and women’s health.

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Newmi Care, our ecosystem company, has raised $1.5 million in a recent funding round. The investment was led by Sprout Venture Partners, with participation from several other notable investors.

• mPulse, a Los Angles, CA-based provider of Health Experience and Insights (HXI) technology, acquired Zipari, Inc., a leader in healthcare consumer experience technology.
• eClinical Solutions LLC, a Boston, MA-based provider of digital clinical software and services, received a growth investment from GI Partners. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.
• Safi Biotherapeutics, a Cambridge, MA-based developer of manufactured red blood cells (mRBCs) as an alternative to donor blood transfusions, raised $5M in seed funding.
• GT Medical Technologies, Inc., a Temple, AZ-based medical device company with a corporate purpose of improving the lives of patients with brain tumors, secured a $35m venture loan facility, of which $15m has been initially funded from Horizon Technology Finance Corporation (NASDAQ: HRZN), an affiliate of Monroe Capital.
• Inflammatix, a Sunnyvale, CA-based molecular diagnostics company, closed a $57m Series E financing.
• PathPresenter, a Montville, NJ-based image sharing platform for pathology, closed a Series A funding round of $7.5m.
• PhoreMost Ltd., a Cambridge, UK-based biopharmaceutical company, added USD $12m to its Series B financing, bringing the total raised to over $50m.
• CardiaTec, a Cambridge, England, UK-based TechBio company employing computational methods to decode the biology behind cardiovascular disease, raised $6.5M in seed funding.
• NeoPrediX, a Regensburg, Germany-based predictive analytics company focused on neonatal, maternal, and perinatal health, received an investment from Springhood Ventures.

• Taking steroids more than doubles a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a new study warns. Patients taking steroid pills, injections or infusions are 2.6 times more likely to develop diabetes than those not on steroids, researchers reported Sunday in a presentation at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Madrid.
• Having asthma appears linked to raised odds for miscarriage and troubles with fertility among women, new Danish research shows.
• Exercise actually is helping you develop healthier belly fat tissue, a new study says. That means that even if you don’t obtain six-pack abs, exercise is good for your long-term health, researchers said.
• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that it will launch an independent review into any possible effects of toxic metals found in tampons. The announcement follows the release of a study in July that found traces of lead and other metals in 30 tampons from 14 brands obtained from major online retailers and stores
• Prescriptions for amphetamine stimulants to treat ADHD have increased significantly in recent years, particularly during the pandemic.Unfortunately, high doses of stimulants like Adderall can increase the risk of psychosis or mania by more than fivefold, a new study finds.
• Men taking valproate and their partners are being advised by the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to use effective contraception because of new data suggesting a potential small increased risk of harm to children if used by a father at conception.
• New research has shown that an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled digital stethoscope helped doctors identify twice as many cases of heart failure compared to a control group that received usual obstetric care and screening. 
• The number of Americans with a potentially dangerous heart rhythm condition is three times greater than previously thought, a new study claims. An estimated 5% of the population — 10.5 million U.S. adults — have atrial fibrillation, according to new estimates from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
•  The injectable weight-loss drug Zepbound appears to work better in women than in men, according to a new analysis of the clinical trials that led to its approval. All doses of tirzepatide consistently reduced weight in both women and men, researchers found.
• Two monoclonal antibody treatments to slow Alzheimer’s disease, lecanemab (Leqembi) and donanemab (Kisunla), have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the past two years.
• Less than half of people who’ve survived a stroke will go on to have a healthy, normal sleep pattern, new research shows.
• Ozempic and Wegovy can prevent heart problems in overweight and obese people, particularly if they also suffer from kidney disease, a new clinical trial shows.
• Contrary to a warning placed on labels for CART-T cancer therapies, use of these treatments does not appear to boost the odds for a secondary cancer later, a new study shows.
• Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKC) in New York City believe CAR-T may be safer in that regard than is now assumed, and warning labels may need to be revised.
• People with diabetes are more prone to gum disease, due to the damage the chronic illness does to small blood vessels, a new study warns. Diabetics who suffer from other diseases caused by small blood vessel damage — diabetic retinopathy and neuropathy — are also at higher risk for gum disease, researchers found.
• An experimental blood test could one day help identify people most likely to develop severe lung problems like COPD. The test reviews a panel of 32 proteins in blood that best predict people most likely to suffer a rapid decline in lung function, according to a study published recently in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
• Losing weight can help a person with obesity — especially those with diabetes — fend off serious infections, new data shows.

• GSK plc announced that it has completed the primary objective data analysis from the phase II part of the TH HSV REC-003 trial. This trial is a combined phase I/II proof-of-concept study to assess potential clinical efficacy of GSK3943104, an early-stage therapeutic herpes simplex virus (HSV) vaccine candidate, before progressing it for further clinical development.
• WellSync, a leader in telehealth innovation, has announced a collaboration with Marius Pharmaceuticals to offer Kyzatrex (testosterone undecanoate) CIII capsules, an oral form of testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) on WellSync’s comprehensive virtual care platform. This initiative demonstrates WellSync’s ability to integrate seamlessly with pharmaceutical products, delivering an innovative direct-to-patient healthcare solution.
• Merck, known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, announced positive top-line results from its pivotal phase 3 trial (V503-064) evaluating the company’s 9-valent Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, Gardasil 9 (Human Papillomavirus 9-valent Vaccine, Recombinant) in Japanese males ages 16 to 26 years.
• Bayer will present new analyses from the pivotal trials PULSAR and PHOTON featuring Eylea 8 mg (aflibercept 8 mg) at the Annual Meeting of the European Society of Retina Specialists, in Barcelona, Spain, 19-22 September 2024.

• The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has approved the health coverage to all the senior citizens aged 70 years and above irrespective of income under the flagship scheme Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY). The decision is expected to benefit approximately 4.5 crore families with six crore senior citizens with Rs. 5 lakh free health insurance cover on a family basis.
• The National Health Authority (NHA) and IIT Kanpur signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to develop a platform for validation of artificial intelligence models in the healthcare sector. Under this MoU, a federated learning platform across a variety of machine learning model pipelines, a quality-preserving database, an open benchmarking platform for comparing & validating AI models, and a consent management system for research under Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) would be developed by IIT Kanpur.

📳 – Quick Reads: 

• How anger can hurt your heart: Studies have shown that negative emotions like anger can increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
• Overlooking invasive fungal infections could prove deadly: One of the most insidious aspects of IFIs is their ability to masquerade as other respiratory conditions

See you next Friday, friends 👋
Navneet

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