By Wolfgang Hackl, CEO, OncoGenomX Inc., Allschwil, Switzerland

As the FemTech World Awards 2026 winners are revealed, it is a privilege to reflect on the Research Award 2026 sponsored by OncoGenomX Inc., and on the exceptional standard set by this year’s finalists.

On behalf of OncoGenomX Inc., sincere thanks to every applicant and congratulations go to the nominees whose work continues to push women’s health innovation forward.

Research Awards matter because they do more than recognize excellence in a single moment; they help elevate the science, courage, and systems thinking needed to transform women’s health at scale.

This year’s three finalists represented three different but equally important forms of progress. Natural Cycles brought forward one of the largest studies ever conducted on menstrual and ovulatory patterns in perimenopause, analysing nearly one million cycles from more than 197,000 women across over 140 countries.

That project stood out for both its dataset scale and its ability to translate new evidence into a regulated product designed to support women navigating a historically under-researched life stage.

IVI RMA stood out for scientific rigor and clinical precision. Its multicenter, double-blinded, non-selection study on non-mosaic segmental aneuploid embryos offered high-quality evidence on implantation and live birth outcomes, helping move fertility care away from assumption and toward a more evidence-based approach to embryo management and patient counseling.

UN ESCAP’s ‘Femtech in South-East Asia: Unlocking innovation for women’s health’ stood out for a different reason.

Rather than focusing on one product area or one clinical question, it mapped an entire emerging ecosystem.

The report examined the state of femtech across key South-East Asian markets, documented barriers such as financing gaps, stigma, weak ecosystem support, and data challenges, and then translated that research into practical recommendations for governments, investors, founders, and ecosystem builders.

In many ways, all three finalists are winners.

Each project excelled on core evaluation criteria including originality, relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability.

Each also offered something genuinely valuable to the future of women’s health: stronger evidence, clearer decision-making, more informed product development, and greater visibility for unmet needs that have gone too long without sufficient attention.

The final decision was therefore a genuine head-to-head race.

The jury supported its discussion with a numerical scoring approach, but it also looked carefully at systems impact: the extent to which a project not only advances one intervention, but improves the wider conditions under which innovation can emerge, scale, and endure.

That perspective mattered in this category, because the strongest research is not always only the most technically impressive; sometimes it is the research that opens doors for many future innovations to follow.

On that basis, the OncoGenomX Jury selected UN ESCAP as the winner of the Research Award.

The decisive factor was not simply that the report was comprehensive, though it was.

It was that the project helps change the environment around innovation itself.

It provides a practical roadmap for strengthening research, improving data governance, expanding founder support, addressing gender bias in investment, scaling innovative finance, and integrating women’s health more fully into policy and development agendas.

That broader enabling effect is what distinguished the UN ESCAP project. Natural Cycles demonstrated outstanding research translation, and IVI RMA demonstrated exceptional clinical rigor.

UN ESCAP, however, showed how research can influence the structures that determine whether many other femtech solutions will ever be funded, adopted, trusted, and scaled. In that sense, its impact reaches beyond one company, one product, or one clinical pathway, and toward a healthier innovation landscape overall.

Warm congratulations again to all finalists and nominees.

And special congratulations to UN ESCAP on receiving the OncoGenomX Research Award at the Femtech World Awards 2026.

The jury’s decision reflects deep respect for all three projects and a shared belief that women’s health advances fastest when excellent science is paired with the power to reshape the systems around it.

Fertility innovation is poised to take centre stage at Femtech World’s third annual awards event, with entries closing in just one week.

The Femtech World Awards recognise outstanding leadership, innovation and impact across key areas of women’s health and wellbeing.

Among the categories is the Fertility Innovation of the Year award, which honours a pioneering product, service or initiative driving transformation in fertility care and support.

Shortlisted entries will demonstrate exceptional innovation in helping individuals or couples along their fertility journeys,  whether through technology, treatments, education, accessibility or emotional support.

Judges will assess scientific advancement, inclusivity, user impact and the potential to break down barriers in fertility health.

The award is sponsored by FinDBest IVF, a global B2B digital platform designed to simplify and accelerate connections between IVF and ART manufacturers and trusted, pre-vetted distributors worldwide.

Since its launch in 2024, the platform has tackled a longstanding challenge in the MedTech sector – fragmented, costly and inefficient market access – by providing a curated, country-specific directory of active partners, featuring key segmentation, certification indicators and direct contact tools.

Covering everything from consumables and lab equipment to AI-powered embryo selection and genetic testing solutions, FinDBest enables companies to scale internationally without the need for expensive congresses or cold outreach.

Juan A. Jiménez, founder and CEO of FinDBest IVF, said: “As part of its commitment to driving smarter access to reproductive innovation, FinDBest IVF is proudly supporting the Femtech World Fertility Innovation Awards for the second year in a row.

“This collaboration reflects two core beliefs at the heart of the platform.

“First, FinDBest IVF was created to accelerate not only the discovery of innovative fertility solutions but their global adoption.

“By supporting these awards, the platform helps amplify breakthrough technologies—from AI-based egg quality tools to next-gen IVF microdevices—and ensures they can reach the right partners and clinics faster.

“Second, the Awards align with FinDBest’s vision of building a 360-degree commercialisation ecosystem, where innovation is not just recognised, but connected to real-world opportunities.

“Many award nominees are pioneering startups and clinical researchers—exactly the kind of innovators who benefit from FinDBest’s support in navigating regulatory complexity, distributor validation, and go-to-market strategies across diverse regions.

“Together with Femtech World, FinDBest IVF is helping to spotlight, support, and scale the future of fertility care.”

Find out more about the Femtech World Awards and enter for free here.

Mifepristone, widely used in medical abortions, may also lower breast cancer risk in women more likely to develop the disease.

Doctors and scientists say stigma surrounding mifepristone is deterring pharmaceutical firms from examining its use as a preventive drug, even though three studies suggest it can slow cancer cell growth.

They argue the drug’s link with abortion, along with restrictions in some countries, is blocking research that could have major public health benefits.

Mifepristone is one of two drugs, along with misoprostol, that women in the UK can use to end pregnancies up to 10 weeks.

Women take a mifepristone tablet, wait 24–48 hours and then take misoprostol. It works as a selective progesterone receptor modulator, meaning it blocks progesterone – a hormone known to drive cell growth in breast cancer.

“It is deeply disappointing that the successful application of mifepristone in one area of clinical medicine is hindering more extensive research into other indications that could benefit public health,” the eight co-authors wrote in The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Women’s Health.

“The time is long overdue to give mifepristone the opportunity it deserves to be investigated as a non-surgical option for primary prevention.”

The authors, specialists in reproductive health and cancer, are based in London, Edinburgh, Stockholm and Erbil, Iraq.

Breast cancer kills about 670,000 women worldwide each year, according to the World Health Organization.

Mifepristone could prove particularly useful for women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene variants, who currently face limited choices beyond mastectomy or what the authors describe as “low efficacy” drugs.

Three small studies carried out in 2008, 2022 and 2024 showed the drug reduced progesterone’s effect on breast tissue cell growth.

UK cancer charities have joined calls for further research.

Dr Simon Vincent, chief scientific officer at Breast Cancer Now, said: “More risk-reducing treatment options for women with a high risk of developing breast cancer, that also protects their quality of life, are desperately needed. And we need to explore all avenues, including existing drugs, to achieve this.

“So early research into mifepristone is an important step forward and we need further studies to understand if these drugs are safe and effective.”

Dr Marianne Baker, Cancer Research UK’s science engagement manager, pointed to the UK’s 57,900 annual breast cancer cases as evidence that “it’s vital we invest in research exploring new ways to prevent the disease”.

She added: “Cancer develops when cells grow uncontrollably. Early studies showed that mifepristone slowed down cell growth in breast tissue, so it might be useful in delaying or preventing cancer.

“But we need more research to understand whether it’s effective, how it works and who would benefit most from it.”

Prof Kristina Gemzell Danielsson, the lead author and head of the department of women’s and children’s health at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, said: “Stigma around mifepristone used for abortion is describing part of why mifepristone is not more extensively researched for prevention of breast cancer.

“Taken together, our data support the use of mifepristone for prevention of poor prognosis breast cancer. All studies were randomised controlled trials using a low dose of mifepristone for two or three months.”