Nike Co-Founder donates $1.1B to Providence to fund Oregon's 1st dedicated women's hospital 🏥
Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny have made a $1.1B gift to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and Providence Heart Institute in Portland - one of the largest gifts to a healthcare institution in US history. The donation will fund Oregon's first hospital dedicated entirely to women's health, bringing together gynaecology, pregnancy, labour and delivery, menopause and cardiovascular care under one roof, alongside a modernised NICU. A significant portion will also further investment in the Heart Institute, which has grown from 40,000 to 63,000 patients annually over the past decade.
“There are a couple of components to this really unprecedented gift, and we’re obviously incredibly grateful. [a new hospital] would provide care for women spanning from pregnancy to birth, postpartum, midlife and menopause, and women’s specialties like women’s heart disease, co-locating those services in a single physical structure.”
— Daniel Oseran, Executive Medical Director, Providence Heart Institute
Evvy raises $40M Series B to build the data infrastructure for women's precision medicine 🧬
New York-based vaginal microbiome company Evvy has closed a $40M Series B led by Catalio Capital Management, bringing total funding to date to over $60M. Serving 100,000+ patients and 3,000 practitioners, Evvy now has 15 peer-reviewed publications and is building towards what CEO Priyanka Jain describes as a new-age Pap smear - an at-home, non-invasive sample providing data-rich insights across infections, fertility, endometriosis, HPV progression and more. The company is entering the fertility space, linking vaginal microbiome data to IVF success rates, preterm birth and recurrent pregnancy loss.
“You can’t build precision medicine for women on datasets that never adequately measured female biology in the first place. That’s why I believe AI for women’s health needs to be paired with new biological data at scale. AI can help us identify patterns across molecular signals, hormones, symptoms, treatments, fertility outcomes, and other biomarkers that traditional medicine has struggled to connect.”
— Priyanka Jain, CEO and Co-Founder, Evvy
NIH launches $21M initiative to build sex-specific computational models of hormone biology 🔬
The NIH is awarding $21M to develop computational models that simulate how hormones behave differently in male and female bodies across the lifespan - from puberty and the menstrual cycle through pregnancy and menopause. Current mathematical and animal models fail to capture these differences, leading to dosing, treatment response and toxicity gaps between men and women. The programme will fund AI-enhanced multi-scale models, digital twins and physics-informed models, accelerating the translation of sex-specific biology into clinical practice.
“Current mathematical and animal models do not sufficiently capture variations between men and women. Addressing this gap is critical to the understanding of sex-specific biology and the development of more individualized approaches to therapeutics.”
— Nicole Kleinstreuer, Deputy Director for Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives, NIH
Aitiologic raises €6.4M seed to advance tissue-resolved liquid biopsy starting with preeclampsia 💉
Vienna-based Aitiologic has closed a €6.4M seed co-led by Heal Capital and Ananda Impact Ventures, with PUSH VC, LANA Ventures and Oxford Nanopore co-founder Gordon Sanghera also participating. Its Aitios platform reads tissue-specific biology from cell-free DNA in a routine blood draw - its first application being first-trimester preeclampsia risk prediction using the same blood sample already taken for non-invasive prenatal testing. The company has published clinical data and is running a validation study across 1,000+ pregnancies. The round sits in the top 1% of all-time seed deals in Austria's health sector.
Everlywell partners with Waters Corporation to bring at-home HPV cervical cancer screening to health plans 🎗️
Everlywell has partnered with Waters Corporation to make the BD Onclarity HPV Self-Collection Kit - the most comprehensive FDA-cleared at-home HPV screening tool in the US, detecting 14 high-risk HPV genotypes - available through health plans via the Everlywell platform. Members collect a sample at home, mail it to a CLIA-certified lab, and receive results digitally with telehealth follow-up and in-person referral for abnormal results. Around one in four US women is not up to date on cervical cancer testing, and roughly half of cervical cancer diagnoses occur in women who have never been screened.
“Every woman deserves a clear and accessible path to understand her health and take the next right step. The new partnership expands access to screening, and connects women to appropriate follow-up care. By bringing together outreach, convenient screening access, clinician-guided results, and connected care systems, we can help plans close care-gaps while preparing for the next generation of women’s preventive care.”
— Julia Cheek, Founder & CEO, Everlywell
FDA accepts Organon's sNDA for MIUDELLA copper IUD seeking extended use up to six years 💊
The FDA has accepted for review a supplemental NDA from Sebela Women's Health, exclusively licensed to Organon, seeking to extend MIUDELLA's approved duration of use from 3 to 6 years, with a PDUFA date expected in Q2 2027. MIUDELLA, approved in 2025, is the first hormone-free copper IUD approved in over 40 years, currently indicated for up to 3 years of use and anticipated to be commercially available in late 2026. If approved, a 6-year labelling would meaningfully expand its competitive position in the non-hormonal contraception market.
“The FDA's acceptance for review of this supplemental application represents an important milestone as we work to broaden birth control options for women. If approved, MIUDELLA would offer up to six years of hormone-free contraception and the potential to expand a woman’s contraceptive choices.”
— Juan Camilo Arjona Ferreira, Head of Research & Development and Chief Medical Officer, Organon
