The women’s health and wellness space is booming. The opportunities are real and so are the rewards. This is where you keep up. Welcome to The DXF Edit.
MONEY MOVES
$92.5 Million Just Bet That Men Are Ready for Birth Control
Men have historically had exactly one answer to the question of male birth control: not my problem. Women have been living with the consequences of that answer for 65 years. The landscape is starting to shift.
Pill usage among women dropped from 33% to 29% between 2022 and 2024, driven by side effect fatigue, a push toward natural methods, and a growing refusal to keep absorbing a burden that was never equally distributed. Then Dobbs removed abortion access across 11 states. It would be wrong to think that only women are concerned about abortion access. After Dobbs, the number of men who said they would try male contraception within a year of availability jumped from 39% to 49%. Turns out when women’s options shrink, men’s interest grows.
Contraline just raised $92.5M to advance NES/T, a once-daily topical gel that suppresses sperm production while keeping testosterone levels stable. Co-led by BVF Partners and RA Capital, with GV, Lumira Ventures, and Invus. A product that completed a global Phase 2b trial across 462 couples, with 86% hitting contraceptive-level suppression within 12 weeks. Reversible. Tolerable. Phase 3 starts in 2027, but we will likely need to wait a few more years before it’s approved.
The science is real. The demand is real. The question is, will men actually walk the walk?
Melinda French Gates Just Wrote a $215 Million Check for Women’s Health, and She’s Sending a Signal
Two years after walking away from the Gates Foundation, Melinda French Gates is making clear where her money is going. On June 4, she pledged another $215 million through her organization Pivotal, bringing her total women’s health giving to over $600 million in just two years.
The funding targets contraceptive access, maternal care, midlife and menopause health, and maternal mental health. Specific allocations include $10 million to The Menopause Society for clinician training and $40 million to Co-Impact for maternal mental health initiatives, particularly in Africa.
The timing is pointed. Federal research funding has been cut. Eleven states have banned abortion. Women’s health still receives just 6% of private healthcare investment globally. French Gates isn’t pretending otherwise, she told Fortune directly: “I’m trying to send a signal.”
The Menopause Society put it plainly: philanthropy is going to have to fill the gap government is leaving behind.
INNOVATION
The Drug Women Take for Weight Loss Might Also Be Protecting Them From Breast Cancer
A drug prescribed for weight loss just showed up in breast cancer research, and the numbers are hard to ignore.
A University of Pennsylvania team analyzed health records from 111,646 women aged 45 to 80, all with a BMI of 25 or higher, all with documented breast imaging. Women on GLP-1 medications had 35% lower odds of developing breast cancer in the full cohort, and 30.5% lower in a matched analysis controlling for age, race, BMI, breast density, and diabetes status. A multi-site clinical trial is now in development for high-risk women.
This is observational data. It doesn’t prove cause and effect. But when a drug millions of women are already taking shows a consistent cancer signal across two separate analyses, controlling for every obvious variable, you don’t wait for perfect evidence to pay attention.
The Collagen Supplement Debate Is Settled. Sort Of?
Women spend billions on collagen every year. The industry has promised everything from younger skin to faster workout recovery. The science has been murky — a new review is confirming benefits many women had already been noticing.
The most comprehensive collagen review ever conducted just published in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal Open Forum, 113 randomized controlled trials, nearly 8,000 participants. The verdict: collagen supplements work, for some things. Skin hydration, elasticity, and osteoarthritis pain all showed measurable improvement, with longer, consistent use producing greater benefits.
What collagen doesn’t do: boost athletic performance, speed workout recovery, or reduce post-exercise soreness. Those claims have driven much of the sports nutrition crossover marketing aimed at women. They didn’t hold up.
Consistent, long-term use. Skin and joints, not performance. That’s the actual science. Now you know.
LAW & POLICY
A Hormone-Free IUD Was Supposed to Be the Safe Option. Then It Shattered.
Paragard is marketed as a simple, hormone-free copper IUD: no pills, no hormones, up to 10 years of protection. For thousands of women, removal was anything but simple. The device fractured inside their bodies, leaving embedded fragments, causing organ damage, infections, and surgeries that sometimes ended their fertility.
Nearly 4,000 of those women sued. The first bellwether trial concluded in February, and Teva won. An Atlanta jury rejected claims that the company failed to warn about the device’s tendency to break, or that it was defectively designed. One verdict doesn’t end it, thousands of cases remain active, and a second bellwether is scheduled for Fall 2026.
But a bigger question is still pending. Teva is arguing federal preemption, that because the FDA controls the label, women can’t sue for failure to warn at all. If that defense succeeds, thousands of claims get thrown out before a jury ever hears them.
One jury said Teva didn’t fail these women. Nearly 4,000 more are waiting to disagree.
The FDA Just Approved a New Sunscreen Ingredient for the First Time in 27 Years. Yes, Really.
While Europe and Asia have had access to better, lighter, more protective sunscreen formulas for decades, American consumers have been stuck with greasy, chalky, inadequate options, not because better technology didn’t exist, but because the FDA hadn’t approved a new filter since the late 1990s. That finally changed this week.
On June 9, the FDA approved bemotrizinol (BEMT), a broad-spectrum filter blocking both UVA and UVB radiation, safely used abroad since 1999. You’ve likely already encountered it: Nivea, La Roche-Posay, Bioderma, and ISDIN all carry BEMT formulations in their European lines, the ones American women have been importing for years because they feel better and don’t leave a white cast.
EWG found US sunscreens deliver just 24% of the UVA protection their labels suggest. BEMT fixes that. US formulators now have 17 approved filters. Europe has 30. DSM-Firmenich holds 18 months of exclusive marketing rights, so expect premium pricing before broader adoption brings costs down. First products hit shelves by end of 2026.
The gap was always a policy failure, not a science one. Twenty-seven years later, the FDA finally caught up.
ON THE FEED
TikTok’s Newest Obsession Isn’t a Product. It’s a Friend Group.
There is a loneliness epidemic happening in plain sight. Women in their 20s and 30s report some of the highest rates of loneliness on record — post-college friend groups scatter, cities swallow people whole, and the social infrastructure that made friendship effortless simply disappears. Nobody’s selling a supplement for that.
Enter @4inthe5. Four women living across New York City’s five boroughs, documenting their lives together on TikTok since April. Their first post got 1.5 million views. They now have 188,000 followers and over 2 million likes. The comment sections aren’t just watching — they’re grieving. Women tagging friends they’ve lost touch with. Some in new cities asking how to find their version of this. Others in their 30s saying they forgot what it looked like to simply exist with people who know you.
The format is already spreading. @4thegirlsatl launched in Atlanta almost immediately. Other cities are being called out in the comments. NOLA. Chicago. LA.
What @4inthe5 tapped into isn’t a content gap. It’s a lived one. Watching women choose each other publicly is medicine for something the wellness industry doesn’t have a product for. Apparently, seeing it on your FYP is enough to remind you that you want it — and that you can build it yourself.
Mayim Bialik Tried a GLP-1. It Did Not Go Well.
On June 5, Mayim Bialik — neuroscientist, actress, and former Jeopardy! host, published an essay in The Free Press titled “My GLP-1 Nightmare.” One low-dose injection. What followed: explosive diarrhea, sulfur burps, full-body aches, and an inability to keep down food or water for days. She needed IV fluids. She couldn’t leave her home for four days. It went immediately viral.
The conversation split exactly as you’d expect. Women who’ve had terrible side effects saying finally, someone said it. Women with no issues calling it misleading. Doctors noting adverse reactions are real but not the norm.
But the part that landed hardest wasn’t the medical detail. It was what Bialik wrote at the end — that even while she was violently ill, she caught a glimpse of her changing body in a reflection and noticed what she’d always wanted to see. She didn’t flinch from what that meant.
The GLP-1 conversation has always been about more than a drug. It’s about how deep the messaging about women’s bodies runs — deep enough that a medical emergency can coexist with a complicated sense of relief. That’s the conversation women are actually having. Bialik just said it loudest.