In the face of stagnating reproductive outcomes, MoleSense has decided it’s time to shift the dial. We spoke with co-founders Ata Golparvar and Gian Luca Barbruni about the gaps they see in reproductive healthcare, the promise of continuous hormone monitoring and why they believe proactive, data-driven care could transform reproductive medicine.

How did you become aware of and interested in a potential gap in the pregnancy monitoring market?

Ata: Our interest in pregnancy monitoring emerged from a broader focus on reproductive health. In short, maternal age is rising globally and we saw a need for technologies that could help women safely navigate fertility, pregnancy and the complications that often accompany advanced maternal age. Interestingly, when we started looking into it, we found the field was underserved, with relatively few technologies specifically designed to support women facing these challenges.

Gian Luca: As we explored the market further, we became increasingly aware that maternal and foetal outcomes in developed countries have stagnated, despite advances in diagnostics and medical technology. This highlighted a clear gap in the market for better monitoring systems capable of identifying risk factors earlier and supporting more personalised pregnancy management.

Why has the field of reproductive health stagnated over the past few decades?

Ata: Unfortunately, it all links back to gender. Reproductive health has historically been overlooked by both the technology sector and healthcare investors, because these fields are largely male-dominated. As a result, investment and innovation have often focused on conditions perceived as more universal – such as cardiology or oncology – while pregnancy and women’s health received comparatively little attention.

Gian Luca: This imbalance has left reproductive healthcare lagging behind other medical fields despite clear unmet needs. However, attitudes are beginning to shift as healthcare systems and investors increasingly recognise both the clinical and economic value of improving maternal care. For us, this growing awareness represents a major opportunity to develop a solution in this field – with potential for expansion.

Beyond the business opportunity, what is MoleSense’s mission?

Ata: Overall, we’re committed to shifting from a reactive to a proactive healthcare model – in reproduction and beyond. Many conditions are only treated once symptoms appear, when opportunities for earlier intervention have already been missed. By developing tools for continuous monitoring, we believe we can give clinicians and patients earlier insight into what’s happening inside the body, enabling more timely interventions, supporting behavioural changes and ultimately improving long-term outcomes through more preventative, data-driven care.

How is MoleSense’s technology innovative compared to alternatives offered by your competitors?

Ata: MoleSense is developing a non-invasive wearable patch that continuously monitors biochemical markers through sweat analysis. The technology stimulates sweat glands using topical agents, allowing sweat to be collected directly from the skin surface. It is then analysed using DNA-based biosensors that detect specific metabolites and hormones, including oestrogen and progesterone. This data can then be used to inform patient pathways across our two focus areas: high-risk pregnancy and fertility.

Gian Luca: One of our biggest differentiators in reproductive healthcare is that we combine the continuous monitoring capabilities of wearable devices with the clinical insight traditionally associated with laboratory biochemistry. Most existing wearables track only physiological signals such as heart rate or temperature, whereas MoleSense aims to continuously monitor biochemical changes in real time – an approach that remains rare outside of continuous glucose monitoring.

What impact could your technology have on patients? Can you give us some illustrative examples?

Gian Luca: We’re passionate about creating technology that works seamlessly in the background, without bothering users, but still creates significant impact. Our patch is specially designed to be ultra-thin and unobtrusive; you can put it on and forget about it while it collects biochemical data every few hours – it doesn’t require any active input from you. This is particularly important in areas such as fertility treatment and high-risk pregnancy, where patients are often already under significant emotional and physical stress.

Ata: As a concrete example of how this data can be used to improve patient care, I’ll point to the avoidance of preterm births. Notably, around 40% of preterm births are linked to conditions that require regular monitoring, yet many biomarkers are currently measured only intermittently in hospital settings. By enabling continuous biochemical monitoring at home, our technology gives clinicians insight into whether and when intervention – such as induced delivery or caesarean section – is necessary, with the ultimate goal of keeping babies in the womb longer, so they are born more mature and with better health outcomes. But the potential applications go far beyond this: continuous biomarker monitoring could inform everything from menopause management to broader wellness programmes.

What challenges have you overcome in developing your technology? Do you have any other obstacles left to surmount?

Ata: I would say our biggest challenge has been (and continues to be) navigating regulation for an entirely new category of medical technology. Because our solution doesn’t fit neatly into existing frameworks, regulators are still determining how to classify and evaluate it – which creates significant hurdles for approval pathways.

Gian Luca: We’ve been engaging with regulators for several years and it’s frustrating that the needle hasn’t moved yet. I believe our situation mirrors the early evolution of continuous glucose monitoring technology: it took time, investment and regulatory adaptation before this was widely accepted – but it was accepted eventually!

What are the next steps for MoleSense?

Ata: Fundraising and clinical validation, in the short term. We’ve already developed a device capable of collecting sweat samples and we’re preparing for first-in-human studies focused on safety and biocompatibility, in collaboration with partners in the Swiss life sciences ecosystem. We’re also advancing with pre-seed funding to support the next phase of development.

Gian Luca: We’re starting with fertility and high-risk pregnancy, as that’s where we’ve identified strong unmet clinical needs and clear user demand. In the longer term, however, reproductive health is just the starting point for our broader vision of preventative and personalised healthcare. Continuously collecting biochemical data in real time could benefit users across a whole range of contexts, helping them understand how lifestyle, behaviour and physiology interact over time. In fact, a shift towards continuous self-monitoring is already well underway, driven by growing consumer interest in longevity, wellness and wearable health tracking. Our solution represents the next major step. We envisage unlocking better clinical outcomes across the board by enabling earlier interventions and more individualised, proactive health management.