5 UK Companies Working Across Women’s and Maternal Health
For decades, medical research paid less attention to female biology than male biology. The consequences reach well beyond reproductive medicine. Hormones influence how drugs are metabolised, gynaecological conditions can cross several medical specialties, and biological events such as menstruation, pregnancy and lactation create tissues and samples with their own diagnostic potential.
Women’s health therefore covers an unusually broad range of science. A fertility assessment might begin with hormones in a blood sample. Researchers studying ovarian or endometrial cancer can look for molecular signals in the reproductive tract. Menstrual blood provides access to cells shed from the uterus every month. Genetics may help explain why two people respond differently to the same contraceptive, while the microorganisms transferred through breast milk are being studied for their role in the developing infant gut.
The UK has companies working across reproductive biology, diagnostics, genomics, microbiology and clinical software. This guide highlights five of them.
It is a selected Benchscope guide rather than an exhaustive ranking, with organisations included according to their stated activities, location and relevance to the UK life sciences ecosystem.
Hertility Health
Hertility Health grew out of reproductive science rather than a conventional consumer health business.
Founder Dr Helen O’Neill is an associate professor in reproductive and molecular genetics at University College London, with research spanning ovarian biology and reproductive medicine. Hertility’s scientific team also includes co-founder Dr Natalie Getreu, whose research has included fertility preservation and ovarian tissue cryopreservation.
The company has taken some of that laboratory and clinical expertise into the home. Users can collect a blood sample for hormone testing, receive a doctor-written report and, where appropriate, move into services including gynaecology consultations, fertility counselling and ultrasound scans.
The resulting dataset has also become part of Hertility’s research. Its 2024 ReProductive Report drew on information from more than 325,000 women, giving researchers a large body of real-world reproductive health data alongside the company’s testing and care services.
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Ellele Health
The technology behind Ellele Health did not begin with women’s health.
The company is part of The Origin Group Limited (TOGL), where mucosal sampling technology and a hologenomic analysis pipeline had previously been developed for colorectal cancer diagnostics. Ellele has taken that approach into gynaecology, using the vaginal environment as a source of material for genetic, epigenomic and microbial analysis.
That choice of sample matters for the questions the company is investigating. Ovarian and endometrial cancers arise within the reproductive system, yet useful biological material can be difficult to access without clinical procedures. Vaginal sampling gives researchers another way to search for biomarkers associated with those diseases.
Based at Granta Park near Cambridge, Ellele is applying the technology to gynaecological diagnostics and biomarker discovery, with current research focused on areas including ovarian and endometrial cancer.
View Ellele Health on Benchscope →
Woost
Every menstrual cycle produces a biological sample containing material shed from the endometrium. Almost all of it is discarded.
Woost is investigating what can be learned from it.
The London company is developing technology around menstrual blood as a source of biomarkers for reproductive and gynaecological health. Its founder, chemical biologist Melis Ekinci, has taken the company through the University of Cambridge’s impulse entrepreneurship programme, while Imperial College London is listed among its collaborators.
PCOS is an early area of focus. The condition can involve irregular periods, altered androgen levels and metabolic symptoms, with diagnosis drawing on several different pieces of clinical evidence. Woost is developing a home testing approach that combines menstrual blood analysis with digital symptom tracking.
Menstrual blood can be collected repeatedly at home and contains biological information from tissue that would otherwise be considerably harder to sample.
Dama Health
Elena Rueda’s early attempt at making sense of contraceptive side effects was a spreadsheet.
Before co-founding Dama Health, she recorded the contraceptives her friends were using, their doses and the side effects they experienced. Her interest in sex differences in medicine had also surfaced during academic research, where she encountered the longstanding problem of female biology being underrepresented in biomedical datasets.
Rueda later founded Dama Health with Dr Paulina Cecula, whom she met at Imperial College London, alongside obstetrician-gynaecologist Dr Aaron Lazorwitz. The company now develops clinical decision-support technology for hormonal contraception and menopause care.
Part of its research sits within pharmacogenomics, where genetic variation is studied for its influence on drug response. Combined with medical history and other patient information, that evidence can be incorporated into tools designed to support clinicians when considering hormone therapies.
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BoobyBiome
Dr Lydia Mapstone, Dr Sioned Fon Jones and Dr Tara O’Driscoll met through their scientific careers and founded BoobyBiome around a particularly rich biological sample: human breast milk.
Milk contains its own microbial community, and those bacteria contribute to the microorganisms colonising the infant gut during early life. BoobyBiome’s founders brought backgrounds spanning molecular biology, microbiology, biophysics and neuroscience to studying that relationship. The company grew from research associated with UCL’s Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health.
Its research has included building a breast milk microbiome database and biobank using donated milk. The company is also developing a synbiotic containing bacterial strains isolated from breast milk, with the aim of supporting infant gut health.
In 2024, BoobyBiome received a £1.6 million Biomedical Catalyst grant from Innovate UK to support testing and scale-up of the synbiotic. The project includes collaboration with researchers at the University of Reading as the company prepares the product for clinical testing.
View BoobyBiome on Benchscope →
A wider view of women’s and maternal health
The biology of women’s health creates some unusual opportunities for diagnostics and research. Menstrual blood provides repeated access to endometrial material. Vaginal sampling can capture molecular information from the reproductive tract. Blood hormone measurements provide information about endocrine function, while breast milk offers a window into the microbial relationship between mother and infant.
Better analytical tools are increasing what can be learned from those samples. Genomics, microbiome analysis, molecular diagnostics and bioinformatics can extract information that would have been difficult to obtain only a generation ago.
There is a clinical layer as well. Hormone measurements, genetic information and biomarkers still have to be interpreted alongside symptoms, medical history and individual circumstances. Obtaining biological data and deciding how to use it in healthcare require different forms of expertise, and UK companies are building technologies on both sides of that process.
Browse other women’s and maternal health organisations listed on Benchscope, or explore more UK life science companies by location, category and focus area. If your company is listed and would like to update your profile, or if you think we have missed a relevant organisation, submit an update here.