FemTherapeutics: Building the World’s First Patient-Specific Gynecological Prosthetics
We sat down with FemTherapeutics Co-Founder & CEO Inara Lalani to hear their founding story, learn more about their team, and share their journey as one of our Fund II portfolio companies.
With a vision to transform the personalized health space, Inara Lalani, Negin Ashouri, and Dr. Mihnea Gangal have created a FemTech solution to redesign the one-size-fits-all approach to women’s health and restore gender equality in medical innovation.
The three co-founders were inspired to conceptualize FemTherapeutics after participating and taking home the top prize in the McGill Surgical Innovation Program. As students shadowing Dr. Gangal at the Notre Dame Hospital at the time, Inara and Negin recognized a high pattern of unnecessary hysterectomy surgeries. Diving into the root of the problem and the failing treatment plans on the market, the team honed in on vaginal pessaries as a key area in need of improvement. From here, the idea of FemTherapeutics was born with the mission to replace the archaic solutions in women’s health by modernizing non-invasive treatment plans for a variety of pelvic health conditions.
“We thought, ‘we have custom dental, we have custom orthotics, we have custom hearing aids—why don't we have something custom in gynecology?’”
Over half of all women will face some sort of pelvic health issue in their lifetime, such as one in ten women experiencing pelvic organ prolapse due to vaginal childbirth, menopause, lifestyle, behavioural, and comorbid conditions. While there have been significant advancements in surgical treatment methods, high symptomatic recurrence rates are still being reported.
Pessaries—devices inserted into the vagina to support the walls and related pelvic organs—are considered the most viable option to manage prolapse for women in any age group. The problem is that 50% of existing pessaries have a discontinuation rate within the first year because of their geometric shapes, sizes, and nonoptimal fit. Because of the subjective measurement process, there is a 30% fitting failure rate.
FemTherapeutics is addressing this unmet need by bringing the tried-and-true business models of custom dental and orthotics to the gynecology space. Taking 10 to 20 measurements for each patient, their AI software designs and recommends the best design for that unique patient's history and measurements. The device is then 3D printed with medical-grade silicone for a custom, dynamic fit. Rather than a fixed volumetric shape, the pessary morphs to applied pressure and expands or contracts when adapting to the muscles.
“While pessaries are one of the oldest medical devices dating back to the Egyptians, they haven't changed at all. The only thing that's changed is we've gone from using pomegranates—literally—to devices that are now made out of medical-grade silicone.”
Since early inception, the team has received impressive accolades, such as the top prize in the Annual Surgical Innovations Pitch Competition, second place in the McGill Dobson Cup, and the Steinberg Centre Simnovation Prize at the 2019 McGill Clinical Innovation Competition (CLIC). They have continued the momentum from academia to a full-fledged FemTech company as they have achieved the CIX Canadian Innovation Exchange's Top 20 Most Innovative Companies in Canada and Innovations for Equity by WIN: Women in Innovation.
Their most recent milestone has been a successful feasibility study in February 2023 that fitted several patients with a custom pessary. The team has also joined the Mayo Clinic Platform_Accelerate program to further train their predictive models with high-quality, de-identified clinical data.
In the next stages of growth, FemTherapeutics has received funding from 2048 Ventures, Investissement Quebec, The51 Ventures, Sheboot, several physicians and angel investors, and non-dilutive financing from the Ministry of Economy & Innovation, National Research Council of Canada, and more. With this round of funds, the team plans to further develop their platform and devices, kick off pivotal clinical studies, and expand their IP portfolio and R&D efforts.
They also intend to grow their team with more technical support and sales and marketing as they venture into sales in early 2024. Coming from multi-disciplinary backgrounds, Inara, Negin, and Dr. Gangal share a broad range of experience in science and technical business development that has set solid foundations for their team and technology. The entire FemTherapeutics leadership team is proudly diverse, female-led, and highly experienced in STEM-related disciplines—a primarily male-dominated field, especially conducting business in the MedTech industry.
“You attract the same people who have the same values as you do and share the same story or come from the same background. I think that's a huge win, not only for a women-led, Canadian-based company, but also for the fact that this company is spearheaded by two women, making products for women.”
Learn more about FemTherapeutics at https://femtherapeutics.com.