“The Power of X is within all of us. We need to be the advocates for our own health, but also for startups, entrepreneurs and innovators who are trying to change the game in how we look at the health of women,” said Seema Kumar, CEO of Cure, during her remarks at Cure’s Power of X Summit, Solutions for an Untapped Market.”
More than 200 investors, founders, scientists, and healthcare leaders gathered at the two day event, March 24 and 25, 2025, at Cure’s innovation campus headquarters in Midtown Manhattan to focus on accelerating investment in women’s health innovation and driving scalable solutions to long-ignored issues in healthcare.
The Power of X Summit was a dynamic forum to confront the persistent disparities in funding, research, and care that disproportionately affect women worldwide. The event also was an investment opportunity, as two startups received more than $150,000 in equity investments and services as part of an Impact Challenge.
Addressing the $1 Trillion Opportunity
The summit highlighted a growing realization among investors and industry leaders: women’s health represents both a critical equity issue and a $1 trillion market opportunity. Despite representing half the global population, only a fraction of research and development dollars are directed toward women-specific conditions.
The women’s health sector is primed for tremendous growth, noted Carolee Lee, CEO and Founder of Women’s Health Access Matters (WHAM).
“We are 51 percent of the workforce and 51 percent of the population. We make 85 percent the spending decisions and 80 percent of the healthcare decisions. That has profound societal and economic opportunity,” she said. WHAM estimates that investing $350 million in women-focused research could yield a $14 billion return to the economy.
The health market for women is expected to grow in the next two years to reach $42 billion by 2027, noted Charisse Dean, Advisory Managing Director at KPMG.
“We need more strategic investment,” Dean said. “There actually is no reason. There is no excuse. There should be significant investment. The business case is very apparent, but unfortunately we are still challenged. I call it stubborn resistance for the investment. But we know, and we will change.”
Former FDA Commissioner Marget Hamburg, MD, during the Summit’s Fireside Chat with Kumar, underscored the investment opportunities in addressing the widespread unmet medical needs of women, particularly in areas where women have been historically underrepresented in research and underserved by health systems.
Conditions that affect both sexes often manifest differently in women, she said, yet medical understanding and treatment approaches have lagged behind due to a lack of targeted investment.
“There’s a failure to invest in product development and innovation,” she said, adding that access to care is further hindered by outdated training systems and logistical barriers that don’t fully address women’s unique health needs.
A Convergence of Change-Makers
Leaders across sectors including biotech, venture capital, policy and healthcare delivery engaged via panel discussions throughout the day. These sessions kicked off with a focus on how startups can build their ground game to build investment cases more likely to garner critical funds to translate their findings into commercial successes.
Keara Sauber, Chief Executive Officer of Sauber Capital, noted how important it is for entrepreneurs to do their homework not just on their potential market but also on the scope and strategy of an investor. That intel can help shape a startup’s value proposition before they sit down with potential investors to discuss funding.
“Being in a venture capital fund is just like having a startup in biotech,” explained Sauber. “I have a board to answer to, I have shareholders to answer to, I have investors that are putting their money into a particular vertical with an expectation of a return, so I have to make a case [for the funding].”
Additional panels addressed common themes that entrepreneurs face when developing healthcare solutions: gaps in sex-specific data, challenges in clinical trial design, unmet therapeutic needs and opportunities for AI to improve diagnostics and care. Experts presented how such hurdles are impacting therapeutic areas that impact women only, disproportionately or differently, ranging from neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases and autoimmune disorders to cancer, reproductive health and healthcare challenges for women of color.
Panelists included Meryl Comer, Co-Founder of UsAgainstAlzheimer's; Stacey Rosen, MD, President Elect of the American Heart Association; Kristen Dahlgren, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Cancer Vaccine Coalition (CVC); and Linda Goler Blount, President of the Black Women's Health Imperative.
A central theme throughout the sessions: moving beyond awareness into tangible action and investment to realize scalable solutions. Conversations ranged from venture scaling to explorations of alternative and nondilutive funding, with many speakers calling for systemic reforms in how research is funded and care is delivered.
The Summit also amplified the need for public-private collaboration, particularly around policy reforms and data access, to accelerate equitable innovation. Several attendees emphasized that closing the gender health gap will require cross-sector alignment.
Among experts from the financial sector speaking at the Summit were Katherine Andersen, Head of U.S. Life Science & Healthcare at HSBC Innovation Banking; Scott Donohue, Senior Director, Market Access at Deerfield Management; Howard Levin, MD, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Medical Officer at Deerfield Catalyst; Viq Pervaaz, Senior Vice President of Life Sciences & Healthcare at New York City Economic Development Corporation; Stacey Seltzer, Managing Partner and Founder of Pontiva Healthcare Partners; and Cameron Wheeler, PhD, Partner at Deerfield Management.
Attendees also heard first-hand patient stories from several women who used their diagnoses, care experiences and business acumen to become advocates for health solutions. Dahlgren, a former NBC national correspondent, discussed how her breast cancer journey motivated her to create the CVC, and Sally Joy Wolf, a former media executive, discussed how her metastatic breast cancer lead her to co-found the Breast Cancer Early Detection Coalition.
Stylist Stacy London shared her midlife health journey both as a person with psoriatic arthritis and a woman in menopause. Emmy Award-winning journalist, author and documentary filmmaker Tamsen Fadal discussed her new book How To Menopause, Reclaim Your Health, Take Charge of Your Life and Feel Even Better Than Before during a panel with Suzanne Fenske, MD,Founder of TārāMD, and Kathryn Schubert, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Society for Women's Health Research.
Impact Challenge: Investing in Women’s Health Now
LunaJoy, a mental health provider for women, won the Summit’s Impact Challenge securing $100,000 in equity funding and $10,000 of in-kind legal services from the competition’s sponsors, respectively, the Catalytic Impact Foundation (CIF) and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.
LunaJoy’s winning pitch presented its investment case for being a “care engine” for women at all stages of their lives, including those experiencing postpartum depression, anxiety and infertility-related concerns.
Limax Biosciences received $50,000 in equity funding from CIF as runner-up. Limax created an innovative hydrogel surgical adhesive designed to reduce the risk of postpartum hemorrhage, which is a significant cause of maternal mortality. Benjamin Freedman, PhD, Co-Founder of Limax, made the company's presentation.
CIF and Cure created the Impact Challenge to provide funding to early-stage entrepreneurs in the women's health arena to support research and development that spans the gap between preclinical and clinical projects. The Challenge received more than 120 applicants, resulting in six finalists who pitched live at the Summit.
Catalyzing Innovation: Strategies for Progress
In closing remarks, Cure CEO Seema Kumar noted that the Sumit’s goals were to create conversations, actions and, ultimately, cures.
“The Power of X is within all of us,” Kumar said. “We hold the power and we need to be the advocates for our own health, but also for startups, entrepreneurs and innovators who are trying to change the game in how we look at the health of women.”
Among the key priorities for advancing the field: integrating sex-based differences into medical education and research, improving data collection to identify unmet needs, and ensuring women are adequately represented in clinical trials. Kumar also called for stronger cross-sector collaboration among academia, industry, and policymakers, the creation of targeted funding models for scalable, data-driven solutions, and the promotion of diverse leadership that combines scientific and business expertise to drive progress in women’s health.
"If we align across sectors with purpose and urgency, we can unlock exponential progress,” Kumar noted.
The Cancer Vaccine Coalition, Catalytic Impact Foundation and Women’s Health Access Matters (WHAM) also collaborated on the Summit, for which KPMG was the lead sponsor, with additional sponsorship support from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and Rubix Life Sciences. Cure also partnered with the Society for Women's Health Research and G2G Consulting on the event.
For more information about the Power of X Summit, read Cure’s Insight Articles: