Oakland, California-based women health company NextGen Jane has announced it has raised $9 million in a Series A round of funding led by Material Impact. Access Industries, Viking Global Investors, and Liminal Ventures participated in this round. Angel investors that joined this round include Rox Anderson (Massachusetts General Hospital), George Chuch (Harvard Medical School), Kacey Fitzpatrick, Frances Frei (Harvard Business School), Deborah Kilpatrick, K. Angela MacFarlane, Anne Morriss, Steve Quake (Stanford University), David Walt (Harvard Medical School), and George Whitesides (Harvard University).
What does NextGen Jane do? It changes the way women and people who menstruate engage with and access healthcare. NextGen Jane’s smart tampon platform allows users to conveniently mail in cells from the reproductive tract that shed during menstruation. And by developing genomic classifiers for specific disease states, NextGen Jane hopes to enable earlier diagnosis of reproductive disorders — whic can take up to a decade to identify today.
“Menstrual effluence acts as a natural biopsy of the female reproductive tract, enabling unprecedented access to tissues for diagnosing diseases,” said NextGen Jane co-founder and CEO Ridhi Tariyal. “We are excited to be partnering with Material Impact to bring to market a better way to manage health. Decoupling sample collection from the clinic is a simple but effective way to expand access to care for many underserved populations. Access to care in the US and globally is increasingly influenced by geography and wealth. For our part, Jane is addressing the looming resource crisis in medicine by creating affordable solutions that separate care from brick and mortar settings and truly enable individualized, preventative care.”
How did the idea for NextGen Jane come together? In a 2017 interview with Forbes, Tariyal said that she went to her female doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital to find out how much longer she would have to have kids as she was launching a startup at age 33. Her doctor said that there was no test available for getting that vital information about her body. Her doctor ended up referring her to an IVF clinic, which is an expensive option. Tariyal then pursued this idea full-time and partnered with NextGen Jane chief scientific officer Stephen Gire to build on it.
This round of funding comes at a pivotal moment in NextGen Jane’s growth. The company successfully has translated its technology from prototype to beta product. And the funding will be using the funding to further advance its scientific data set in select reproductive health areas as it positions for commercialization sometime next year. After learning that there were non-commercial options available, she went back to her doctor and pointed out that there was a test and asked for a prescription.
“At Material Impact we look for groundbreaking materials-based technologies that have the capacity to democratize access to the resources we need most,” added Material Impact founder and managing partner and former life sciences healthcare executive. Adam Sharkawy. “The global women’s health market is $36.5 billion and growing, but an overwhelming number of women don’t have access to the care they need, even in established markets like the US, where half of the country’s over 3,000 counties lack any practicing OB-GYN. Jane’s disruptive technology platform replaces in-clinic, invasive diagnostic procedures with an elegant and simple solution, paving the way for women everywhere to manage their health proactively on their own turf and on their own terms.”
NextGen Jane’s technology is able to preserve nucleic acids and other analytes and ships it to a lab for in-depth sequencing analysis and disease detection. And the company’s system allows for superior preservation of DNA and RNA of cells from the endometrium, cervix, fallopian tubes and ovaries. The company has a mission for transforming biological signals to digital diagnoses to empower the individual with early detection of disease and move the locus of power and health management from the clinic to the consumer.
“One in five Americans live in Primary Care Deserts, and a national physician shortage makes it impossible to catch up,” explained Primary Care Research Institute’s head of community development Katie Adams. “At PCRI we work to make the healthy option the easy option for every community locally and globally. NextGen Jane provides a way for women in underserved communities to receive diagnostic testing without having to visit a clinic! This is a game changer for diverse populations in Gyno Desert areas like California’s San Joaquin Valley.”
