Image:Photo: Oksana Horiun/Getty Images. Design: Daniel Giaratano
How much do you know about the ovaries? For starters, the ovaries are the command center of a woman’s health and vitality, according to Pirae Yurttas Beim, Ph.D., CEO. Cellmatics, a women’s health-focused biotech company. “The ovary does a lot, and when it stops working, we end our period,” she said. “It’s kind of ironic that we men mark the end of the function of this important and vital organ just by noticing that we no longer have periods.”
Historically, women’s health has taken the back-burner in terms of attention, funding and energy, even though our ovaries matter more than women’s reproductive health. “The ovaries are important for metabolic function, for immunity, for brain health,” says Dr. Yortas Beim. “When you have ovarian dysfunction early in life with conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome (which affects about 15% of all women) or early menopausal conditions, it’s not just a reproductive condition. We need to stop referring to them as our reproductive organs.”
She added, “We need to stop referring to these as reproductive conditions because they do so much more. Women with PCOS, for example, will have significant risk factors for cardiovascular disease, mental health problems, insulin resistance, diabetes, obesity and hirsutism, so It’s not just reproductive. It’s important for women to understand.”
Although menopause is a catastrophic public health crisis and life event, there is a huge disparity in funding for research and innovation in this space. “Less than 2% of all biopharma funding goes into women’s health innovation,” said Dr. Yurtas Baim. This amount is in stark contrast to the number of pharmaceuticals in the world. And yet, that 2% doesn’t create a virtuous cycle back to better products for women.
That’s why he founded Cellmatics and began his journey to find a drug to boost ovarian function and end menopause. “Actually, 100 years ago, menopause wasn’t a thing. “The average life expectancy of a woman in the United States was 48,” she said. “The ovaries function from about 50 to 55 on average. Now just 100 years later, our average lifespan in this room is 82”. He is the future of health media event at SXSW earlier this month. “So we’re not just outliving the function of this important organ, we’re outliving it for decades.”
But even though women are living longer, we’re not always thriving. “There are no more organs where we just let it die, and we think it’s natural,” said Dr. Yurtas Beim. “When people say, ‘Well, menopause is normal.’ I remind them, ‘Well, dying in childbirth is normal. And, yet, we don’t think that’s right.”
And if the roles were reversed and it happened to men, there would probably have been a solution years ago. “We’re working on a drug to help expand ovarian function, and to help slow the decline, the way testicular function declines for men, so we can age like a fine wine,” he said.
Dr. Yortas Beim and her team started from scratch to make this happen, especially considering that women are less likely to respond to the drug, more likely to have adverse effects and more likely to experience withdrawal symptoms. “We’re going from ‘a unique animal with unique body parts and unique genes, and let’s figure out what makes that biology unique and then design products for that body,'” said Dr. Yurtas Beim.
