Women’s health faces growing headwinds, despite jump in venture investment
The women’s health field has a long way to go addressing persistent deficits in research and treatment. Common conditions that affect women like endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome remain misunderstood, while maternal mortality in the U.S. remains higher than in similarly wealthy countries.
Yet there are green shoots. Startups focused on women’s health drew a record amount of venture funding in 2024, extending a run of recent momentum.
Researchers at Silicon Valley Bank, which tracks startup funding, tabulated in a report last month $2.6 billion in women’s health venture investment last year, up from $1.7 billion in 2023. Notably, biopharma-related investments made up 34% of the total sum, indicating rising interest in new treatments over the sector’s past focus on “healthtech” solutions.
“Women’s health has continued to grow,” said Raysa Bousleiman, vice president of life science and healthcare venture capital relationship management at SVB. Last year’s total is “the highest we’ve ever seen.”
Conditions that only or disproportionately affect women have long been overlooked by the life sciences industry. But that’s beginning to change as more venture capital flows into women’s health. And while reproductive care remains a top target of venture dollars, other areas such as menopause and maternal health are receiving more attention, too.
“Maternal healthcare outcomes are still not great for women in the U.S., and so there’s still the need [for innovation],” said Bousleiman.
One notable company to raise funds last year was Comanche Bio. The biotech drew in $75 million from NEA, Atlas Venture and F-Prime Capital, among others, to advance a treatment for preeclampsia, or high blood pressure related to a pregnancy that can lead to complications for the mother and fetus.
Companies are also recognizing how women’s health can encompass other, more well-known conditions. The largest pharmaceutical companies generate more than 60% of their revenue from treatments for conditions, like autoimmune, heart and bone disease, that uniquely or disproportionately affect women, according to a McKinsey Health Institute report.
“With this growing recognition of the ways that health conditions impact women differently than men, you start to grow the scope,” said Bousleiman. “And because the scope is growing, it paints a better picture for women’s health.”
Government headwinds
But the outlook may be shakier in academia, which is so often the source of ideas that later blossom into future drugs.
The Biden administration launched the White House Initiative in Women’s Health Research at the end of 2023 to help spur investment in the field. But while $113 million was distributed across startups, universities and health institutions, the initiative began at the tail end of Biden’s presidency and has an unclear future under President Donald Trump.
“By the time it got going, they lost the election — and it’s over,” said Sabra Klein, professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Women’s Health, Sex and Gender Research.
“A year is not dedicated investment.”
The Trump administration has also implemented several actions that could further impede already neglected areas of research or hamper adoption of existing treatments.
“The field of women’s health is already underserved, so we can’t really afford further slowdown,” said Sabrina Johnson, CEO of women’s health-focused company Daré Biosciences.
The Trump administration has slashed grant funding and major research studies involving the National Institute of Health, raising alarms for industry leaders, investors and researchers alike.
In April, for example, the administration said it would withdraw federal funding from the Women’s Health Initiative, one of the largest ongoing women’s health studies that’s assessing menopause, osteoporosis and nutrition. The administration later backtracked, but reports indicate funding could still be in limbo.
“There’s a huge concern that restrictions that are being put in place are going to only harm women’s health care,” said Marcelle Cedars, a reproductive endocrinologist at University of California, San Francisco Health and former president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
DEI restrictions
Research, and funding for it, has also been affected by Trump’s order to end diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, in federal programs. While transgender health research is the primary target of the administration, its policy to acknowledge only two sexes has hampered studies beyond women’s health for using the wrong language.
The orders could slow public funding for women’s health research further. A study presented last year by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicines found that, of total grant funding from the National Institutes of Health between 2013 and 2023, only 8.8% was dedicated to women’s health, a shortfall the Biden administration’s initiative was meant to remedy.
“We can’t devote more than 9% of our research effort to taking care of 51% of the population; that’s a problem,” Cedars said.
And the U.S. already lags when it comes to evaluating sex and gender in clinical trials, as NIH-funded clinical trials weren’t required to involve women until 1993, leaving a huge deficit of information. The Food and Drug Administration has implemented guidance to promote diversity in clinical trials, but that may now conflict with new Trump administration policies.
The government cuts are impacting the private sector, too, as pharma companies adjust to layoffs and restructurings at the agencies that regulate them.
Thousands of jobs have been eliminated under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, including at the FDA. The HHS has said agency inspectors and reviewers would not be impacted, but some fear the restructuring will impact the amount of support and guidance the FDA can offer companies.
“I think [the headwinds] can almost be particularly pronounced in women’s health, because there have been so few innovations and products that have gone through the FDA. Any sort of slowdowns or disruptions can have a really tough impact,” Johnson said.
For researchers like Cedars and Klein who have dedicated many years to their work, disruptive policies are discouraging. But for those starting out, the interference could deter them from conducting research in the U.S.
“If you have four years of decimating that pipeline [of researchers], it will take you decades to rebuild it,” Cedars said.
Cedars and Klein hope the upticks in private funding for women’s health biotechs will carry over to support the kind of necessary early science that is already “underfunded” and “under-acknowledged.” Some investors are already trying.
“It’s incredibly important to focus on how little money has gone into women’s health research, particularly from the NIH.” Cedars added.
“This could be a call to the private sector to invest earlier in a pipeline,” Klein said. “It’s a riskier investment, but without it we lose our standing in the world as being biotechnology leaders [and] biomedical leaders.”
