This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Endometriosis & Women's Health with Somer Baburek | 238

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

I am done with women’s health being undervalued and underfunded. I am tired of feeling like our bodies are fodder for politics rather than what they are, which is: half of population, complex, individual, and just as worthy. And while I clearly have feelings about it, I have no expertise. So I’ve invited Somer Baburek to join us as our guest. Somer serves as the President & CEO of Hera Biotech, a women’s health company focused on commercializing a non-surgical diagnostic for early detection of endometriosis. Prior to founding Hera, Somer spent ten years in life science venture capital at Targeted Technology Fund, as the Director of Clinical Operations for Santalis Pharmaceuticals where she built out the clinical program at the company. All that to say, she knows a whole lot about women’s health, endometriosis and FemTech. It’s time for all women to get the care they deserve, the information they need, access to the options and choices currently only available to some, and the opportunity to be listened to and treated for whatever it is that is hurting us. There are women who don’t and won’t advocate for women’s health, but guess what – we can stand for them anyway. Because this isn’t about deserving or earning, this is about the inherent value of each and every one of us - let’s value women’s bodies for far more than how they look! Connect with Somer: Website: www.herabiotech.com  IG: https://www.instagram.com/herabiotech/  FB: https://www.facebook.com/herabiotechnology  Like what you heard? Please rate and review  Thanks to our This Is Woman’s Work Sponsor: Visit  https://www.heyfreya.co/ and use promo code TIWW for 25% off multivitamins and other products - I use the Thrive multivitamin, Quench, and Nourish daily!

I am Nicole Kalil, and on this episode of This Is Woman's Work, we're going to talk about something that is impacting over 190 million women in the world, and it is only getting worse. And in full transparency, it is not something that's impacted me personally. So as is often the case when something isn't part of your day-to-day life, I've had the privilege of not having to know very much about it, but it is impacting the day-to-day lives of many from severe pain during periods and during sex to chronic pain, nausea, depression, and in some cases, infertility. It can start with a woman's first menstrual cycle and last through menopause,

and yet women can go a very long time without getting diagnosed. For some, it can take upwards of six to 10 years because symptoms are often dismissed as just bad periods, you know, because we're so soft and dramatic. And part of the reason why it's not being diagnosed might be because only something like 0.04% of the National Institute for Health's research budget is being directed to it. And it's pretty hard to diagnose, let alone treat something that you don't understand. To put this in perspective, around the same percent of men struggle with erectile dysfunction,

which comes without any of that severe chronic pain, and yet it gets five times more research funding than even PMS does, which 90% of women experience. I don't know about you, but I am done with women's health being undervalued and underfunded. I am tired of feeling like our bodies are fodder for politics rather than what they are, which is half of the goddamn population and complex individual and just as worthy as anyone else's. So before I get any more fired up, let me share our topic for today, if you haven't guessed it already, and that is endometriosis. And while I

clearly have feelings about it, I have no expertise. So I've invited Summer Babarek to join us as our guest. Summer serves as the president and CEO of Hera Biotech, a women's health company focused on commercializing a non-surgical diagnostic for early detection of endometriosis. Prior to founding Hera, Summer spent 10 years in life science venture capital at Targeted Technology Fund as the director of clinical Operations for Santalis Pharmaceuticals, where she built out the clinical program at the company. She earned her MBA with a specialization in data analytics from Louisiana State University and graduated magna cum laude with a degree in entrepreneurship from the University of Texas, San Antonio. All that to say,

she knows a whole lot about women's health, endometriosis, and femtech. Summer, thank you so much for being here. And I want to start by asking why endometriosis became such a focus and such a great important part of your work, and also to give you the opportunity to challenge anything that I said in my introduction, because again, I am not the expert. So why endometriosis? Sure, absolutely. So first of all, thank you so much for having me. And second, I wouldn't challenge a thing about your intro. It's fantastic. But I would add to it and say one of the easiest ways to visualize this, this disease, endometriosis, impacts the same number of people as diabetes. Can you imagine not having a diagnostic test for diabetes and

having no treatment for diabetes? I mean, it's really catastrophic what this disease can do to someone's not only their quality of life, but it significantly shortens lifespan. And we have done a lot of work to show that there's over 60 comorbidities, meaning that when you have endometriosis, you are at a statistically significantly higher risk of developing over 60 other conditions, some of which are ovarian cancer, breast cancer, endometrial cancer, and osteoporosis. Those are not big issues anyways. So I just wanted to add that onto it. So endometriosis, for me, I didn't go out looking for endometriosis.

I went out looking at women's health. I've been passionate about that since my undergrad. I invented a medical device around my first labor and delivery experience that was in women's health. And so I really wanted to get back into it. I'd spent the last 10 years working for a pharmaceutical company in drug development. done wasn't around actually modifying the disease or treating the disease. It was really around silencing symptoms of diseases, which I understand the draw to make people more comfortable, but also like, why wouldn't you want to treat the disease and make people more comfortable? And that kind of led me down the rabbit hole of like, oh, we don't understand these diseases. We don't track their progression. Oh, we don't even diagnose them very well. So that's right then and there is when I said, okay, we're starting a women's health company.

We're started with diagnostics because we're going to put the horse in front of the cart and stop this ass backwards attempt to women's health innovation. I found a lot of technology around endometriosis and what we call liquid biopsy or like blood-based work. Scientifically, there is a big problem with a lot of that work. So we don't understand the disease very well. You can't diagnose something that you don't understand very well, certainly not by looking at something that doesn't have any relationship to the disease itself. And that's exactly what all of that work is done. So it actually just pollutes the space because then investors in the space think, oh, well, they can do the same thing you can do with blood. No. So I found this technology. I've never personally been diagnosed with endometriosis,

but my sister had a hysterectomy at 32 because that's all they knew to do. They didn't even go get the lesions. They just took a reproductive organ. So she still had all the pain associated. So then they had to go back and take the lesions. And she still, to this day, suffers significantly with knock-on effects from that surgery and early menopause because that's essentially what happens. My niece stopped trying birth control to help her after nine and now requires Toradol shots just to go to class during her cycle.

It's horrifying. And so, you know, it's the number one cause of female infertility. And fertility gets tons of looks in women's health, right? Because we should be able to produce someone else's baby, for goodness sake. I mean, God forbid. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, we need more of you here. So, you know, it's a huge unmet need in women's health. It's arguably the largest unmet need in

women's health, which means there's a big old market for it, which gives it a lot of attention. And so I think it's just now starting to hit its heyday. And that's really, I think, why you see a lot of these companies coming in. Oh, we can do this with blood. We can do it with urine. We can do it with your spit. You can't. You don't know anything about it. Right.

Okay. So is it fair to say that up until this point, the primary diagnostic tool involved surgery for endometriosis? Is that correct? That is still the gold standard of diagnosis. So we at our company lovingly refer to it as the where's Waldo approach to diagnosis. So essentially what happens is when you have endometriosis, for those who don't know, the lining of your uterus, so the endometrial tissue invades outside of the uterus and it forms tumor-like little

growths called lesions anywhere in your abdominal cavity. So down in the lower bowel, all the way up to the diaphragm, it's been found on the base of the lungs. It can form anywhere in that entire region. So it's a huge place. It's also varied in the way that it presents. So it's very heterogeneous in its presentation, meaning the lesions can be very small or they can be larger. They can be red, black, powder burn, white, blue, purple. So they show up in a number of different colors in all

sorts of different sizes, depending on the stage of the disease. And so the surgeon is tasked with opening up the abdominal cavity. They do this through laparoscopic procedure and just trying to find the result of the disease growing out in the peritoneal cavity is what that's called or the abdominal cavity, if that's more familiar. And so what I think is really interesting about that is when you look at the statistics around that procedure, that is the gold standard. So let's, so first thing, let's say surgeons see, they think they see endometriosis. Okay. Only 75% of the time does pathology. So taking a cut

of that tissue and then a pathologist saying, Oh yes, that's endometrial tissue growing where it doesn't belong. Only 75% of the time does pathology agree with what the surgeon thinks. So that's a problem. And then two, about 50% of the biopsies taken during that procedure, because they don't just take one, they take multiple biopsies, only about 50% of them are actually endometriosis. So that shows you just how difficult this is. And that is with a human being physically looking at the tissue growing in the environment where it shouldn't be growing. And it's specialized in this and doing this work. So that's the gold standard. And in the US, the average time to diagnosis is eight years.

And a lot of that is because the number one symptom associated with endometriosis is pain with period. So again, like you said in your opening, that gets dismissed a lot as just a normal period pain. The other piece of it is women don't realize that periods aren't supposed to be painful. So I have three daughters. The rule in our house is uncomfortable is okay. Painful is not. So if you can't solve your problem with a couple of ibuprofen, we're in the painful era and that's where we've got to investigate further. So, um,

that gets dismissed a lot, but the, the other piece of it is that women just don't recognize that that's abnormal because we don't talk about it. We're not supposed to talk about things like that, especially being from the South, right? Like it's unsavory to talk about things like that. So no, I have a really good friend who runs a women's health fund. And I love her statement is say all the things all the time. Talk openly and honestly about your health everywhere because that's the only way you destigmatize it.

Okay. So I have so many things going through my brain, but the feeling is really just being pissed off because of this idea. There are women who are experiencing severe pain on a regular basis for approximately on average eight years only to get diagnosed. But then they get diagnosed and there is no real treatment or solution that's like, OK, we can we can fix this. Right. And so I'm going to ask about what can be do? The average citizen, the average woman who, whether we're experiencing it or not, is maybe also feeling pissed off and just like, we've got to fix this. This is just

not okay in today's day and age. What can we do to support the funding, the awareness, all the things that need to happen. Right. Absolutely. So there's tons of organizations that you can get involved with that are doing great advocacy work for endometriosis. There's EndoFound, which is the Endometriosis Foundation of America. There is EndoBlack, which is an incredible organization. So their focus is on women of color. So the diagnostic statistics are really scary. So Asian women are most likely to be diagnosed with endo. They are two times more likely to be diagnosed than Caucasian women. Caucasian women are four times more likely to be diagnosed than women of color.

So their Endo Black is doing some great advocacy work in that space. And then on the funding side, you can push. Women are just now starting to, I think, hit their stride when it comes to being involved in viewing themselves as investors, viewing themselves as people who can enact change from a business standpoint. So you can get involved with women's health funds that are funding hard science work. That's going to be hard to find. But there are some out there. And you can join groups like Portfolia, who are teaching women how to invest in this kind of space. And I think doing a darn good job of it as well. You can also join angel investing groups. It is not incredibly difficult to be a credited investor who is capable of investing in this

space. You don't have to write million-dollar checks to make an impact with companies. And then I think when you think about it all the way down to the political side of it, vote, you can vote and you can look at the candidate and how their funding allocation went and where they pushed for things to get moving. Now, I know that there's a lot of buzz around this hundred million dollar ARPA-H money that came out recently. And I got asked about that. And I want to be excited. I really do want to be excited. I think there was a lot of... It's a step in the right direction. So I'll say that. But the topics... Endometriosis wasn't even a topic. It had to apply in a catch-all wildcard type topic. Well, how is the largest unmet need in women's health not a topic of focus for that funding? The other thing I always

really try to point out delicately is there's companies out there that raise $100 million rounds. So they take $100 million into a single company to do weird things like bring back extinct animals. Okay. So you dedicated $100 million to the whole of women's health. It's a great drop in the bucket. But we've got to do more in terms of that. You talked about NIH funding in the opening. Women don't have their own institute in the National Institute of Health. We're lumped in with the fetal and maternity child group. So we don't even have our own institute. So things like that, voting for change, being an advocate and involving yourself directly, putting your money where your mouth is, finding products that you want to see.

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that I know very many Americans who are super aware about all the things that are going on or involved at a really high level politically. And so we kind of narrow it down to these few key points. And so I say that to say this, my number one point is women's health. That is the thing that, you know, drives almost all of my actions. And I'm not suggesting that that should be true for everybody, but I do think that all women need to care about this, whether or not we're experiencing the thing like endometriosis or whatever. What are, what's being done then on the medical side with companies like yours, Hera Biotech and, and other things like what, what advancements need to

be made so that women can get diagnosed faster and get treatment for endometriosis? Well, so the first thing we could do is put it in the curriculum in medical school. You know, we could, we could cover it, you know, for the topic, you know, but I, I do, I always say this because it's so important because people don't know this. So gynecology is the least paid specialty in medicine and they are responsible for the largest number of medical conditions. So think about everything that a gynecologist has to cover. Like if you're having a problem with your bladder, you go to a urologist and that's, that is their, that's their focus. Gynecologists have to do everything from ovarian cancer to pap smears, to delivering babies

to like, I mean the gamut. And when the field went to the least paid is when it transitioned to the majority being women. That's a problem. Like, hello. Hi. So it is women's work. And you know, I, my rule with gynecologists is no uterus, no opinion. And I'm not saying that men can't be phenomenal gynecologists, but I think it's fair to say that there's a large majority of women who feel very, um, insecure about having a man tell them what's going on with organs they don't have. So, you know, I don't think that's a valid reason to make it a lower paid specialty. So I think we need to investigate that. There should be more reimbursement for gynecological procedures because that's then how you get the better paid doctors. So all of that. From the medical side, there are a number of big pharma companies

looking at developing treatments for endometriosis. And you get the people out there who are like, of course they are. They want to make money off these. Here's the thing. What do you want? You want them not to be developing drugs or you want them to be developing drugs for no incentive like that's not how things work so i mean we can be angry that's okay you can be angry but at the end of the day your anger isn't going to fix it action will and so let's all put our cool heads together and and figure out how to take action so there are pharma companies looking in the space. We need to be able to diagnose it. The biggest problem with pharmaceutical companies developing drugs in this space right now is how do you test your product? How do you know your product's working? Are you just going to cut a woman open multiple times over a clinical trial to look and

see if the lesions are getting smaller? You need a company like HERA, which is doing real science, looking at the tissue that is responsible for this invasion, looking at genes that their whole role is to mediate invasive cell behavior. So you need things like that. So you have to have a diagnostic that's capable of tracking progression. And then you can develop a drug that you can test its clinical efficacy in clinical research. So all of those things. The other thing that I would encourage users or your listeners to do is get involved in clinical research. Women were not required to be included in clinical trials until 1993. Like that's pretty scary guys, but women are also notoriously difficult to recruit to clinical trials because, you know, we're just doing things like working

and raising kids and getting paid a fraction. And, you know, it's, it's those kinds of things, but it's important. We need your, we need your inputs into the medical system. And I talk about that a lot. Every woman engaged in, in some piece of the healthcare puzzle is operating in a system that was not designed for her or by her. So we need those inputs. So do involve yourself in clinical research if it's something that you can do. So this is possibly a dumb question, but how do we involve ourselves in clinical research? If I want to raise my hand, how do I do that? Yeah. So you can go to

clinicaltrials.gov and you can literally search for any condition or any sponsor. So if you're like, oh, I love Merck. I want to go be in a Merck clinical trial. I don't know. But you could search for that, right? Or if you want to say, I'm looking for a clinical trial that just needs healthy volunteers, you can search. So you can filter your search. And then you can find the sites that are in your area. And you can go. And there's usually compensation involved.

So it's not like we're asking you to donate your body to medicine. There's usually compensation. And those healthy human volunteer studies are critical. Okay, incredible. I wanted to ask, while I have you, a little bit about femtech and sort of this progression where it's not as traditional

as going to visit your primary care physician and your local. There seems to be so many alternative options now. We can meet people via Zoom. We can, all of that. So what's good and what should we be careful about as we see technology and medicine interacting and colliding more and more?

Sure. So Femtech, you know, Ida Tinn coined that phrase and it was really to try to give us a language or an industry to talk about. And the first I talk about the waves of Femtech is just like in any industry, you kind of have levels of maturation. So the first wave of Femtech was all about, I need something in my life that helps me track this or helps me do why. So it was all of the nice to haves, this would be so great if, direct to consumer type products. And it was really anything that made your life just a little easier, like tracking your fertility or tracking your period or whatever was important

to you, tracking your hormones. The second wave of Femtech is just kind of now starting. And the word Femtech is losing favor with this group because we're not tech. We're hard science. So it's really just a life science that happens to be women. So I see some really, really great companies. There's one called AOA. They're working on early stage ovarian cancer diagnostics. There's another one called Matruvials that's looking at treating chronic UTIs and doing some really incredible, just incredible research. There's HERA. We're looking at gene expression in the endometrium, which has traditionally been completely ignored because, oh gosh, hormone fluctuations and all this stuff that happens

there during your menstrual cycle. So those companies are critical. And so I think that what you need to be cautious of is the companies telling you they can do something that scientifically it just doesn't track. because it's gained so much attention because there is money being dedicated to the space now now you start to see these companies coming to light that are like oh we can you know we can diagnose endometriosis if you drink water and we're gonna scan your body i don't know what that doesn't make any like if it was that easy don't you think we would have figured it out by now? Come on, man. And I know it sounds terrible. And I know it sounds sexist. And I'm probably going to get in huge trouble for saying this. If you're talking to

a women's health company or a femtech company that doesn't have any females in it, that might be red flag number one for me. You couldn't find one woman in the whole of the world to come work for your company. I am so with you and I will go even further. I feel like that about every company today. Like when I am on social media and people post pictures of like a leadership retreat or an event or whatever, I scan and I'm like, oh, look at that, bro meeting you just had. I am no longer here for or interested in companies who don't have women in leadership and at the executive level and at all levels. And it's just, I'm sorry,

it doesn't track. 60% of about people graduating from college are women. Women are getting their master's degree at a higher level. We've had so many programs in STEM. There are no legitimate reasons in my mind why you can't, as you said, find a woman. And this is not about tokenism or whatever this is about. Like there are people out there who are highly credentialed, highly capable and highly credible. And then your job is to find them. Right. And it's not hard. It's not hard to find them. Like I received so many resumes on a weekly basis from people that I'm like, Holy crap, you are way more qualified than I am for things. You know, I mean, women are out there and they're looking, they're looking for

things. And I find it really amazing that even a startup like Hera that's young and small with basically no funding, women are like, I don't care. I want to work for a company that I feel like is doing something real and meaningful. And that's the most important thing. And I love that. And I think it's so... Rising tides raise all ships. And so I had a really hard time in the beginning with Hera talking about our competitors versus us because they're all female-led companies. And I don't want to talk bad about female-led companies. But finally, my chairman was like, Okay, so don't talk about the people talk about the technology, you've got to talk about this, you know, so we'll get there. But you know, I just I don't have time

or space in my life for that mentality of like the cat fight type stuff. And to your point, you know, it's so it's so important that you just have the input. Women have 80% of healthcare spending power. We make 80% of those decisions where those dollars go. If you don't have a woman input into what a woman might want to buy, this is where we get stupid shit like the pinky glove on that awful version of shark tank and they got nothing and the whole spiel was we're gonna put a pink glove on a woman because they don't want to touch those dirty products um for their menstruation and i'm like what idiot farm did you walk out of. Who let you out? Who let you loose? It's so stupid. You touch your penis every time you go to the bathroom. Could you put a rubber glove on for that? Oh my God. Highlight. I mean,

this episode has all been great, but that was a highlight for me. Thank you. You're welcome. I have to ask one last question for your company, for Hera. If people are listening and either want to help fund or might be the right, I don't know, client, tell us who you're looking for here. Yeah, absolutely. So we're fundraising. We're always fundraising because it's abysmal out there for here. Yeah, absolutely. So we're, we're fundraising. We're always fundraising because it's abysmal out there for everybody. So, you know, you can find us online. I don't do

social media, but I have these lovely women who make it look like Hera does all kinds of social media. So we're on all, you know, Instagram, Facebook, and I think X as well, LinkedIn. We have a clinical trial just wrapping up. So we're not looking for patients right now. We're always happy to talk to people who think they have endometriosis. We'll try to help connect you with the right resources. If you're wanting to get into investing and you have questions, I'm happy to talk to you. I meet with women all the time in all my spare time to help with, you know, going through a financial model or understanding how to get access to like things that will help you understand scientifically what you're looking at. So always happy to do that. You can find me on LinkedIn. And then my email is just my first name at herabiotech.com. It's H-E-R-A, Hera.

And her website is herabiotech.com. We'll put all of the links to all of the things she mentioned, social media and the like in show notes. But at the very least, go to herabiotech.com. And Summer, thank you for this wildly important and frustrating, not because of you, but because of the experience of all of this and for your incredible work. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay, friends, if you or someone you know is experiencing symptoms or has been diagnosed with endometriosis, please know that HERA and EndoFound and EndoBlack, all of these available resources are out there for you. And for those of us who haven't, I'd challenge us to wrap our brains around this very important paradox. Our bodies are ours. We are the deciders. You get to choose what's best for your body. And also, there is no such thing as other women's bodies.

It's time we stand for all women to get the care they deserve, the information they need, access to the options and choices that are currently only available to some, and the opportunity to be listened to and treated for whatever it is that might be hurting or harming us. There are women who don't and won't advocate

for women's health, but guess what? We can stand for them anyway, because this isn't about deserving or earning. This is about the inherent value of each and every one of us and our bodies. You don't like that? Well, guess what? I probably don't like you,

but I'll stand for your health anyway, because that is woman's work.