News
SiS London: new speaker lineup unveiled – meet the innovators leading the charge in women’s health
As the countdown to SiS London continues, the SiS: Women’s Health team is scouting the most inspiring case studies in the industry.
SiS London is curating an agenda that’s not just informative, but truly impactful—packed with actionable insights, personal stories, and valuable lessons from some of the brightest minds in women’s health.
This event is all about guiding start-ups through their entire journey, from securing seed funding to scaling and achieving successful exits.
Today, we’re thrilled to introduce five new speakers who are driving innovation in women’s health. These leaders are ready to share their experiences, challenge the status quo, and empower our community.
Meet the new speakers:
Peony Li, founder and CEO, Jude
Peony is a fearless entrepreneur who took on the notorious BBC Dragons who’ll be sharing her exceptional story. Unveiling how she built a thriving company in Jude, with over $1.4M in revenue and 13,000 customers in just 17 months. Her passion for destigmatizing conversations around women’s health will be front and centre during the Seed Panel at 9:00 AM.
Navneet Kaur, founder and CEO, FemTech India
Navneet is a trailblazer in the women’s health space, particularly in emerging markets. She has been instrumental in advancing innovations across the Indian subcontinent. Her insights on navigating complex markets where others have failed will be a highlight of the Market Expansion Panel at 1:45 PM, where she’ll discuss the challenges and opportunities of scaling businesses in diverse regions.
Nishant Varma, founder, OBG Access
Nishant brings a wealth of experience in guiding startups through successful exits. His journey from startup founder in 2015 to exit via acquisition by Cooper Surgical in 2021 makes him a valuable voice on our Mergers & Acquisitions Panel at 4:20 PM. This talk is your chance to gain crucial knowledge on how to build towards a successful acquisition.
Elena Rueda Carrasco, co-founder and CEO, Dama Health
Elena is breaking barriers in personalized women’s healthcare. Join her on the Market Expansion Panel at 3:00 PM to hear how she’s navigating the complexities of expanding into the US market. Elena will share her strategies for choosing pilot regions, earning trust with healthcare providers, and adapting to diverse regulations—key insights for anyone looking to make their mark in this competitive landscape.
Deirdre O’Neill, co-founder and chief commercial officer, Hertility
Deirdre is a co-founder and the driving force behind Hertility, a company that’s revolutionizing reproductive healthcare with innovative at-home diagnostic testing. At 10:00 AM, she will join the Growth Panel to share her experiences on Hertility’s remarkable evolution, including how the company balances rapid growth with rigorous clinical standards and leverages both direct-to-consumer and B2B strategies. Her story is a must-hear for any entrepreneur navigating growth in a competitive market.
Why you can’t miss this
SiS London is bringing together the most influential voices in women’s health to discuss the strategies that drive success in this rapidly evolving industry. These newly announced speakers add even more depth and diversity to an agenda already packed with valuable content.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, investor, or industry leader, this event offers a unique opportunity to learn from those who are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in women’s health.
Secure your spot—limited tickets available
With this exciting new lineup, tickets for SiS London are selling fast.
Register now to secure your seat and gain exclusive access to a event filled with opportunity, connections and talks that will shape the future of women’s health innovation.
SiS London – October 9, Electric Cinema, Notting Hill London.
An early PET scan after one cycle of chemotherapy may help predict how aggressive breast cancer responds to treatment, a study suggests.
Research led by The Institute of Cancer Research, London and King’s College London suggests that an early scan taken after one cycle of chemotherapy could help predict how well a patient’s cancer will respond to treatment.
The study focused on patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive form of the disease in which cancer cells lack receptors for the hormones oestrogen and progesterone, as well as the HER2 protein.
Patients with TNBC are usually treated with chemotherapy prior to surgery. While many respond well, residual disease at surgery, typically around six months later, is associated with a significantly poorer prognosis. Identifying people sooner who are unlikely to respond remains a major clinical challenge.
The research explored whether using PET imaging shortly after treatment begins, rather than relying only on MRI scans later in the treatment process, could provide earlier insight into how a patient’s cancer is responding. Twenty-two patients were recruited, with fourteen undergoing FDG-PET scans before treatment and after the first cycle of chemotherapy.
The findings, published in Clinical Cancer Research, showed that changes seen on PET scans after just one cycle of chemotherapy were strongly associated with subsequent response, including whether there was no detectable cancer, known as a complete response, by the end of treatment. Importantly, early PET response showed stronger associations with treatment outcomes than standard mid-treatment MRI scans in this study.
Being able to identify patients who are not responding well at an early stage could allow clinicians to adjust treatment sooner or consider alternative approaches. These findings may also support future strategies to better tailor treatment intensity to individual patients.
The study also compared two types of PET tracers, FDG and FLT, to determine which was most suitable. While both met the study’s technical criteria, FDG-PET was selected for further evaluation due to its better image quality, greater consistency and wider use in clinical practice.
The research also explored how imaging changes after just one cycle of chemotherapy relate to the body’s immune response to treatment. Biopsies taken before and after the first cycle of chemotherapy showed that an increase in immune cells within the tumour was strongly associated with both early PET changes and improved treatment outcomes.
The researchers emphasise that these findings now need to be validated in larger studies. Future work will aim to confirm these results in broader patient groups and explore more accessible imaging approaches, such as ultrasound, alongside PET and MRI.
Sheeba Irshad, professor of cancer immunology at King’s College London and lead of the Breast Cancer Now KCL Research Unit, said:
“In patients who had PET scans both before treatment and after the first cycle, we found that this early scan could predict whether they were likely to achieve a complete response by the end of treatment. These findings highlight the potential of early imaging to guide treatment decisions, and now need to be validated in larger, modern clinical trials.”
Andrew Tutt, professor of breast oncology at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said:
“Research that helps us determine early who is already benefitting from standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy and who might benefit from clinical trials to find better treatments is vital. This study shows that FDG-PET may have great value in this regard. We hope to be able to design studies that further investigate and validate these findings.”
The study was supported by funding from King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Breast Cancer Now, Cancer Research UK, and Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity.
We are excited unveil the three finalists competing for one of the Femtech World Awards’ most coveted honours: the Startup of the Year Award, sponsored by Future Fertility.
This award celebrates an early-stage company making a bold impact in women’s health through innovation, vision and execution.
The winner will be announced at our virtual ceremony on 19 June, with the decision made by a representative from category sponsor Future Fertility.
Congratulations to the shortlist and thank you to everyone who entered or nominated.
Startup of the Year Shortlist
Hello Inside is the first women’s health AI company to turn daily metabolic signals into outcomes women feel and healthcare systems reimburse.
Women’s health has long been under-researched, and current AI benchmarks fail on women’s health questions roughly sixty percent of the time.
Hello Inside built the architecture to close that gap.
Across four years and 12,000+ validated metabolic profiles, three in four women improve at least one symptom within ninety days.
They lose four kilograms in three months, moving from overweight into the healthy range. In a clinical study with Alisa Vitti’s Flo Living, 91.9 per cent reduced PMS burden within sixty days.
U-Ploid is an early-stage biotechnology company tackling one of the most fundamental challenges in fertility care: the sharp, age-related decline in egg quality that limits outcomes across IVF and egg freezing.
While much of the field focuses on improving assessment and selection, U-Ploid is developing a first-in-class therapeutic approach designed to improve egg quality itself by addressing the biological causes of age-related chromosomal errors.
Supported by strong preclinical evidence and now advancing into human studies, U-Ploid combines scientific rigour, regulatory discipline and long-term vision to help redefine what is possible in fertility care.
Gestational diabetes is a strong risk factor for future type 2 diabetes, even in women with normal pre-pregnancy weight, according to a study at the University of Gothenburg.
The researchers call for earlier testing and better follow-up.
“Our results show that gestational diabetes functions as a kind of stress test for the body’s ability to manage blood sugar, and identifies women with a greatly increased risk of future type 2 diabetes”, said Jon Edqvist, PhD and affiliated to research at the University of Gothenburg, and operating room nurse at Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
Gestational diabetes is a special type of diabetes that can affect pregnant women.
The condition is defined as elevated blood sugar levels, without previously known diabetes. Treatment involves self-monitoring of blood sugar, advice on lifestyle habits and, if necessary, medication.
Identifying gestational diabetes is important because the disease increases the risk of complications such as preeclampsia, the need for a cesarean section and high birth weight for the baby.
Those who have had gestational diabetes are also at higher risk of later developing type 2 diabetes.
In the current study, published in eClinicalMedicine, researchers now show that gestational diabetes is a strong indicator of future risk of developing type 2 diabetes, even in women with normal weight before pregnancy.
Elevated risk even with normal weight
The study is based on data from the Medical Birth Registry on just over 1.15 million first-time mothers in Sweden, who gave birth between 1987 and 2019. 16,870 women with confirmed gestational diabetes were compared with age-matched women without the diagnosis. The median follow-up period was nine years.
The results show that women with a BMI of 35 and above, i.e. severe obesity, had an almost tenfold increased risk of developing gestational diabetes compared to women with normal weight.
The risk of subsequent type 2 diabetes also increased with higher BMI, but it was significantly increased even with normal weight, which the researchers describe as particularly worrying.
More follow-up and more studies
The researchers behind the study welcome the recently updated recommendations on gestational diabetes in Sweden, where a higher proportion of pregnant women at increased risk are expected to be offered testing earlier in pregnancy, and if necessary, interventions.
“Diagnostics and care of gestational diabetes have looked very different in different parts of the country,” said Annika Rosengren, professor at the University of Gothenburg.
“There is a need for both improved follow-up after gestational diabetes, and more studies that investigate how such follow-up affects future health and prognosis”
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