Dawn Bio
Therapeutics
Read moreWomen’s Health Initiative
About the initiative
BII’s Women’s Health Initiative aims to strengthen the European ecosystem for innovative translational research and start-ups that address the high medical unmet needs within women’s health.
Parts of the Women’s Health Initiative activities are supported by a grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
As part of this joint initiative, BII will conduct a thorough landscape analysis and identify leading research and start-up opportunities for women’s health, with the potential for future funding from BII and partners.
BII will also undertake community-building and awareness-creating activities with selected key partners within the ecosystem.
Please contact Johanna Roostalu at e-mail: jro@bii.dk if you have any questions.
Our focus areas
BII aims to support women’s health across a broad range of indication areas. We are especially interested in new non-hormonal therapeutics solutions, and evidence-based health tech approaches. For specifics, please click on the images below.
Our Bio Studio program welcomes innovative projects that focus on developing new transformative therapeutics or health tech solutions to address high unmet medical needs in women’s health.
Our Programs
Find your program
BII offers help to early-stage start-ups within human health and planetary health. Find more information on the Venture Lab, Venture House, Bio Studio and Residence programs. Any questions? Check out our frequently asked questions and meet some of our alumni start-ups in this article.
Our programs
Timeline for the open Bio Studio call
We currently have an open call for our Bio Studio program, and we welcome innovative projects that focus on developing new transformative therapeutics or health tech solutions to address high unmet medical needs in women’s health. Read more about our Women’s Health open call here.
Open call
8 February - 25 April
First pitches
31 May & 2 June
Proposal writing
3 July - 4 September
Due diligence
5 June - 2 October
Board approval
6 December
Women's Health Innovation Panel
The panel assesses applications for BII’s programs and supports the continuous development of BII’s strategy within women’s health. Members of the panel are leading academics, VCs, entrepreneurial experts, and key industry representatives – a broad representation of the innovation pipeline within women’s health.
AP
Aris Papageorghiou
Professor of Fetal Medicine, Oxford University
LG
Linda Griffith
Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering, MIT
CL
Chandra P. Leo
Investment Advisor, HBM Partners
Laetitia Schwab
Associate, SR One
MK
Mary Kerr
CEO, NeRRe Therapeutics
Pam Garside
Chair, Cambridge Angels and Fellow Judge, University of Cambridge
Stasia Obremskey
Managing Director, RH Capital
Marcel van Duin
VP, Head of External Innovation and Emerging Science, Chief Scientific Officer, Organon
Kelle Moley/Rebecca Forster
VP of Science & Public Affairs/Senior Director (KM), External Innovation and Licensing (RF), Ferring Pharmaceuticals
News
Below you can read all the news related to BII’s Women’s Health Initiative.
Supported start-up companies and projects
DB
DB
Dawn Bio develops a drug discovery platform based on human embryo models for drug development for women’s reproductive health.
Fimmcyte is developing the first disease-modifying treatment for endometriosis to help relieve the millions of women affected by this painful disease.
Probmet is a precision oncology therapeutics company developing targeted treatments for breast cancer brain metastatic patients. Scientists and clinicians will lead the development of breakthrough targeted therapies for metastatic breast cancer in the brain, a devastating disease that currently has limited treatment options.
The Bio Studio Svarre Nielsen project aims to develop a diagnostic test that can inform couples after a pregnancy loss to guide relevant actions.
Henriette Svarre Nielsen leads the project, and she is a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology and an expert in reproduction and recurrent pregnancy loss. Parallel to her clinical and academic career focusing on pathophysiology in reproduction and women’s health, Henriette Svarre Nielsen has successfully founded and chaired Maternity Foundation and co-founded OvaCure. Maternity Foundation aims to save lives in childbirth, develops evidence‐based solutions, and is a strong actor within the emerging health tech field. The Safe Delivery App developed by the Foundation has successfully instructed over 160,000 healthcare workers in Sub‐Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
Notify Therapeutics focuses on the initial ovarian follicle development to help infertile women who do not benefit from today’s standard hormone treatment. The company uses first-in-class drug-inducing factors that regulate the intracellular AKT pathway; a major driver of follicle activation and a signal transductive pathway that promotes survival and growth in response to extracellular signals. The company has identified and validated a compound that activates the AKT pathway in a controlled manner and thus supports the activation of dormant follicles, a pre-request for fertility.
Read more on Notify Therapeutics’ webpage or in this article Meet the start-ups: Notify Therapeutics
XY
XY
XY Therapeutics is developing a first-in-class therapy for male infertility. The company was founded in 2020 based on more than ten years of research in the endocrine crosstalk between the skeleton and the reproductive system.
Infertility affects 15% of all couples globally, and even though a malefactor is responsible in 40% of cases, we exclusively treat the woman for a male disease with hormonal and invasive therapy. Our discovery of the RANKL-signaling system in the human testis has opened a pathway for a new paradigm where male infertility can be treated by treating males with a RANKL inhibitor.
XY Therapeutics is currently repurposing the use of RANKL-inhibitors as a treatment for male infertility based on the company’s second medical patent and a patent on companion diagnostics to select the men that will benefit from the treatment. XY Therapeutics provides solutions for building families.
Cirqle Biomedical has developed an innovative contraceptive for women without the many side effects of hormonal birth control. This product makes cervical mucus temporarily impenetrable to sperm. The barrier is established by a molecule that strongly interacts with cervical mucus and thereby reinforces the mucus to make it impenetrable for sperm cells. Sperm cells are trapped in the cervical mucus and maintained in the vaginal cavity, where the low pH environment of the vagina deactivates them.
Learn more about Cirqle Biomedical on their webpage
Follow Cirqle Biomedical on LinkedIn
Or read about them in these articles:
Meet our Women’s Health Team
Jens Nielsen
CEO, BioInnovation Institute
“BII is delighted to have secured this prestigious grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that will help us drive innovation in this important field as we strive to deliver novel solutions for a global unmet medical need. It enables us to put in place the resources needed to scout and support important initiatives to accelerate improvements in women’s health – a priority for society and an area of strategic interest for BII.”
About BII
The BioInnovation Institute Foundation (BII) is an international commercial foundation with a nonprofit objective supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. BII operates an incubator to accelerate world-class life science innovation that drives the development of new solutions by early life science start-ups for the benefit of people and society.
BII, located in Copenhagen, Denmark, offers start-ups and early-stage projects within health tech, therapeutics, and bioindustrials state-of-the-art labs, vibrant office facilities, business development, start-up business incubation, access to high-level mentoring and international networks, plus unique funding opportunities of up to 1.3 million euros per start-up and 2.4 million euros per project.
Since the inauguration of BII in November 2018, BII has awarded 50 million euros to 62 high-growth start-up companies.