Sara Kemppainen, Founder in Residence at Fifty Years
It’s hard to build novel products without great science. When it comes to women’s health, we still don't have all the answers to very basic questions: What causes endometriosis, and what’s the cure? Why do ovaries age faster than any other organ and can we delay it? What is a good quality human oocyte (egg)? What’s the long-term impact of oral contraceptives on mental health? Only three mammals in our animal kingdom experience menopause, killer whales, pilot whales, and us humans. Why do women go through menopause?
All of these questions share the same problem — research in female reproductive health is long overdue. It was only in 1993 that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) mandated that clinical trials should be run on both men and women. Before that, the male body was the “medical norm”, with almost all medical research, including drug and diagnostic development, conducted exclusively on male bodies.
Still, women’s health attracts only a minuscule percentage of all science funding – about 11% of all NIH funding in 2019.
When Sara Kemppainen, previously Head of Program at Slush, joined Fifty Years in January this year, she made it her mission to find and support the best early-stage teams in reproductive health. The goal was to find solutions to problems that impact millions of women around the world — endometriosis, ovarian aging, infertility, and limited contraceptive options — and to stop considering menstrual tracking apps as the epitome of femtech innovation.
Newly launched Repro Grants, a Fifty Years initiative led by Kemppainen, recognizes the urgency to expedite research in this chronically underfunded but increasingly politicized field of human biology. As an early-stage VC firm based in San Francisco, Fifty Years supports entrepreneurs in solving the world's biggest problems with technology. Repro Grants has been established as a separate non-profit entity under the fiscal sponsorship of the Open Collective Foundation.
“Repro Grants is a “fast grants” program, inspired by our friends at Impetus and Fast Grants, that awards $25,000 - $100,000 to ambitious research projects aiming to deepen our understanding of the female reproductive system. We’re optimizing for speed and hope to complement the existing funding programs that tend to have longer application cycles so that scientists can focus on what matters the most — doing the science,” shares Kemppainen.
"After talking to over 100 entrepreneurs and scientists, it became obvious that it's not the absence of consumer demand or investor excitement limiting rapid progress in femtech, but a gap in early-stage science."
During these conversations, Kemppainen concluded that, without a doubt, accessing funding for women’s health innovators is too slow. On top of that, it's estimated that leading researchers spend up to 50% of their time writing grant applications.
She explains that the Repro Grants' application takes only 30 minutes to complete and applicants get a decision within 21 days. “For comparison, the average National Institutes of Health (NIH) review process takes up to 20 months,” she adds.
“If our legacy systems don’t fund the early-stage science, we’ll have to.”
In the next month, scientific reviewers will support approximately 10 high-risk, high-reward, research projects with the hopes of addressing health inequalities. Kemppainen highlights that they will welcome applications from any scientist (PI, Ph.D. student, postdoc, research assistant) at an academic or non-profit research organization that is interested in studying female reproductive biology. Researchers outside the U.S. are also eligible.
“This is as exciting as venturing into outer space for the first time, as the field is vast and relatively untouched. Studying the intricacies of the female reproductive system will lead to women living healthier and longer lives with more agency over their bodies.”
Repro Grants is opening applications today on November 17th, 2022, to fund the first cohort of scientists, and expect to fund research projects from menstruation to maternal health to menopause. So far, they have raised over $650,000 in philanthropic donations and hope to reach $1 million by the end of the year.
“Most of our founding donors are tech entrepreneurs (Ilkka Paananen, Molly Mackinlay, and Benet Juan) and organizations (The Case For Her, The Inner Foundation, ATAI Impact) that are committed to bridging the data and research gap in women’s reproductive health. I’m positive that with the learnings from the first round of grants, Fifty Years will be able to increase the scale and velocity of the funding in future rounds,” she concludes.
* You can support Repro Grants' efforts to fund bold, early-stage research in female reproductive health at reprogrants.org.
