Apr 23 2024 35 mins
In this episode, Jennifer Justice shines a light on the transformative efforts in women's health led by Dr. Piraye Yurttas Beim, the CEO of Celmatix. Dr. Beim's work exemplifies the uphill battle female founders often endure in the healthcare sector, a field historically sluggish to innovate expressly for women's needs. Despite pervasive sexism within the venture capital landscape, where a meager 2% of funds are allocated to female-led startups, Dr. Beim has secured over $150MM in funding. Celmatix stands out for its dedication to developing medications targeted at conditions uniquely affecting women, a neglected area in pharmaceutical research for almost a century. This pioneering work is not just advancing health solutions but is also making a substantial impact on society at large.
Key Takeaways
- Learn about Celmatix's oral FSH program, a potential game changer in fertility treatment, shifting from invasive injections to a simple daily pill.
- Discover what Celmatix is doing to revolutionize fertility treatments and extend ovarian function to make menopause a choice rather than an inevitability.
- Understand the burdens of current infertility treatments on women and how Celmatix is developing less invasive options, like an oral fertility drug.
- Uncover the broader implications of women's health on society and the economy and the importance of addressing these issues for global progress.
- Hear Dr. Beim’s personal experiences with sexism and the substantial barriers she faced in a male-dominated VC world despite successfully raising over $150MM.
Resources
Connect with Dr. Beim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pirayebeim/
Follow Dr. Beim: https://www.instagram.com/boss_ovary/, https://twitter.com/pirayebeim
Learn about Celmatix: https://www.celmatix.com/
Follow Celmatix: https://www.instagram.com/celmatix/, https://twitter.com/celmatix
About Our Guest
Dr. Piraye Yurttas Beim, PhD, is the founder and CEO of Celmatix, a biotech transforming women’s lives through better medications. Dr. Beim is recognized for pioneering the emerging field of "ovarian health," a term she coined in 2020 to underscore that the ovary is not just an egg factory, but a vital female organ. For over 20 years, she has been leading the innovation of cutting-edge health solutions that are purpose built for women's bodies. Her life’s work and mission will culminate in a future in which the timing of menopause is a choice that every woman gets to make for herself. Dr. Beim completed her PhD work at Cornell (Weill)/Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC and her postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge, first focusing on women’s health oncology and then shifting to women’s reproductive health. When she moved into reproductive health, she was inspired by the precision medicine revolution in oncology and was early in seeing how the same playbook of genomics guided discovery and medicine could be a gamechanger for women outside of cancer. Given funding disparities in women’s health research, she transitioned to entrepreneurship and founded Celmatix in 2009, where her research teams have pioneered breakthroughs in decoding the genomic drivers of ovarian function and health through a multi-omic data initiative that has yielded unprecedented insight into the key molecular drivers of ovarian function and reproductive health conditions. Under her leadership, Celmatix is progressing 5 innovative drug programs, including an AMH agonist program aimed at optimizing and extending ovarian function and an oral fertility drug program to eliminate needles from IVF and egg freezing. She is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, was named to Crain’s 40 Under 40 and its Notable Women in Tech, twice to Goldman Sachs's Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs list, Top 15 founders disrupting their industries by Fortune, and Rock Health's Disruptive Founder of the Year. Celmatix was named one of the most innovative companies in the world by Fast Company.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices