The Startup Aiming To Disrupt Hormone Testing
Level Zero Health has raised $6.9 million for its vision of continuous hormone monitoring with a wearable patch
Level Zero Health, a female-founded startup centered on continuous hormone monitoring, has landed $6.9 million in a pre-seed round for its health monitoring wearable that eliminates the need to head to the lab to get blood drawn.
Swiss VC firm Redalpine led the round, which included several other venture capital and private equity firms.
“Hormones are critical to our health across our whole lifespan,” the startup shared on LinkedIn in a post announcing the funding. “Our objective is clear: enable access to a wealth of data that hormonal patterns give us—from clinical applications to wellness and beyond.”
Level Zero Health has honed in on developing a minimally invasive wearable device worn on the arm that provides data correlated with blood readings through interstitial fluid. The device then offers real-time updates on hormone levels.
Behind Level Zero Health are co-founders Ula Rustamova, a former enterprise tech lead at Palantir and Irene Jia, a bioengineer who worked for Philips in research and development.
“I have to pinch myself that this is indeed what we are getting closer to every single day – a breakthrough technology that will have a ripple effect on healthcare for years to come,” Rustamova, Level Zero Health’s CEO, posted on LinkedIn.
She noted that while the funding broke the record for Europe’s largest pre-seed round for a female-founded team, she’s conflicted: “It’s an example of what’s possible, and these stories should be highlighted. But I also hope one day, almost every article doesn’t have to highlight that we are indeed female,” Rustamova wrote.
As of now, continuous monitoring is commonly associated with glucose—a technology Rustamova credited with revolutionizing diabetes care during a presentation at Entrepreneur First’s Summer ’24 Demo Day, where she noted that leading names and experts from Harvard and Mount Sinai have joined the team.
“The company that makes CGMs makes $4 billion revenue and that’s just from glucose,” she pointed out. “And we’re addressing markets much bigger than that, starting with IVF and low testosterone, where clinics know the pain, and they’re lining up to work with us.”
The startup told TechCrunch that it intends to have its wearable patch cleared for prescription use next year for intermittent hormone testing associated with medical use cases such as fertility and low testosterone and hopes to have the device brought to market in 2028 to continuously measure progesterone, estrogen and testosterone.
“Hopefully, this year we want to show some level of correlation [between levels of hormones the wearable patch can detect and levels detected via a blood draw] — that’s the promise I want to deliver with the pre-seed money,” Rustamova told the publication.
“For too long, hormone testing has relied on invasive blood draws that capture just a single moment in time,” Redalpine shared on LinkedIn. “Level Zero Health is changing the game – their wearable will enable real-time, remote hormone monitoring, transforming care for IVF, menopause, testosterone therapy and beyond. With precise engineering and software, and impressive speed to execution, Level Zero Health is the perfect example of deeptech meeting real-world impact. As Philip [Kneis], investor at Redalpine and board member of Level Zero Health, puts it: We did it for blood pressure, and we will do it again for hormones.’”
The startup is now focused on expanding its London operations and is on the hunt for a founder associate, as well as six other roles, including a head of research and development and biosensor research scientist.