Every Monday we share a quick “best of” from the week that was with our Inner Circle members. What’s trending in the Femtech Insider community and beyond? We’ve got you covered! In this week's brief we talk about Organon's Forendo Pharma Acquisition and New Endometriosis Treatments, plus...
- New Femtech Industry Events 2022
- The Rise of Women's Health Platform Companies
- Inner Circle Fireside Chats 2022
Spotlight: Endometriosis
Last week women’s health pharma company and Merck spin-off Organon, completed its recently announced acquisition of Forendo Pharma, a clinical-stage drug development company focused on novel treatments in women’s health. Forendo’s lead candidate, FOR-6219, is an investigational, potentially first-in-class oral 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (HSD17B1) inhibitor entering Phase 2 clinical development for endometriosis.
And Organon isn't the only company with its eyes on the endometriosis space. Throughout 2021 we have seen quite a bit of activity across digital health, biotech and even medical devices with the goal to better serve women struggling with endometriosis and expect this area to continue to be one of focus in the new year as well.
If you'd like to learn more, have a look at our 5-Minute Brief dedicated to Endometriosis, which we shared a while ago.
➡️ 5-Minute Femtech Brief Endometriosis
New Femtech Industry Events in 2022
And in the spirit of talking about upcoming events... There's a few new femtech industry events worth adding to your calendar in 2022.
Well-Tech World Summit (March 22-23, Dubin/Ireland)
Women's Health Innovation Summit Europe (April 26-27, Basel/Switzerland)
Femtech Tokyo (October 20-23, Tokyo/Japan)
To stay up to date, check out events calendar, where we share the most interesting, relevant events on an ongoing basis.
The Rise of Women's Health Platforms
Hims & Hers added 10 (!) new experts to its Medical Advisory board last week, which is yet another indicator of the company's (and our industry's) move towards digital health platform companies, that build their patient-centric offerings holistically serving their customers' diverse needs across conditions and also ways of receiving care. #thefrontdoorofdigitalhealth
2022 is expected to be a year of consolidation in the women's health space, where small companies, who deeply understand treatment pathways for a particular condition team up or are acquired by larger players, who can help these companies scale by providing infrastructure (see last week's digital health stack article), access to their customer base, and capital needed to go-to-market / commercialize in an increasingly crowded space. Last week's acquisition of Femcy by Eve World is an example here.
Besides vertically expanding into different conditions a full-stack digital health company is likely to offer virtual *and* in-person care (think Tia, Oula or Origin), DTC pharmacy services and branded products (think Ro/Rory or Hims/Hers) as well as an extensive educational offering and diagnostic (at-home) services.
Large, well-funded companies will be leading the charge here and there's a few we're watching particularly closely these days:
➡️ Hims & Hers
➡️ Tia
➡️ Maven
➡️ FemTech Health
➡️ Nabla
➡️ Ro & Rory
➡️ Bump Health
➡️ EverlyWell
We'll explore these thoughts around women's health platforms further in the near future, so do stay tuned! 👀
