Having founded Samphire Neuroscience, a science-first company focused on developing its Nettle technology that can alleviate menstrual symptoms and other issues women experience, such as PMS (premenstrual syndrome) and endometriosis, Radytė expresses her particular belief in using science as a tool to address these issues throughout our interview.

Women's health: underfunded and under-researched

The experience of working as an emergency medic in the United States brought Radytė up close and personal with psychiatric emergencies, ranging from psychosis to distress and anxiety. “That was quite surprising for me,” she detailed, confessing that her understanding of what constituted a crisis related to the physical – like broken bones.

This led Radytė into studying technologies that could be leveraged to combat depression, the majority of which being women, and with that, the realisation that postnatal depression, menopausal depression, and perimenopause anxiety are common with women – but there are seemingly no solutions available. “In fact, women just don’t have solutions available to them,” she stressed.

The question of why Radytė felt these solutions weren’t available resulted in a multi-faceted answer that demonstrated the complexity of what Samphire is tackling. “Women have been told for so long that menstrual pain is normal, and I think women with endometriosis can relate to this experience of it being normalised. I think women are used to dismissing their own symptoms and pushing through.

“The other part is clinicians have never been trained in this area because it has never been researched or on the research agenda. This part I hold close to my heart because I’m a researcher myself, and I think we’re just at that turning point,” she added.

At the time of our conversation, the Women’s Health Strategy had not long been announced in the UK parliament, outlining support for pregnancy, menstrual problems, and gynaecological conditions including endometriosis. “We’re at the cusp of this changing,” said Radytė. “I think the research and funding going into women’s health initiatives is going to move the needle.”

The lack of research into women’s health can partly be attributed to it not being regarded as a serious field, and not one that would attract a lot of funding, said Radytė. “That was one of the big motivators for me, because as a scientist, I was wanting to understand more. When I first googled PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) I realised there were only a couple of research papers and the oldest ones I could find were in 2011, and that gap in the research was very surprising.”

Realising that it was not in scientific literature, Radytė described a feeling of “betrayal”: “These are very basic questions about PMS, as most women experience some form of those symptoms. The severity of the symptoms vary, but we’re all aware it’s happening and all women speak about it. The idea that nobody has done research into the types of PMS there are, is strange.”

Nettle technology

Addressing this gap in solutions led us onto the topic of conversation: Samphire’s Nettle headband, which is due to launch in summer 2024 for their waitlist, and then becoming widely available later in the year. It works by stimulating two parts of the brain, the prefrontal cortex and motor cortex, regions associated with menstrual pain and PMS.

“Historically, the way we’ve thought about engaging brain activity has been by adding chemicals into the brain such as antidepressants, anxiolytics, and other medications. But electrical stimulation has been around for a long time,” Radytė pointed out, “and it affects that faster way of communicating between neurons.”

The headband uses small electrical pulses to stimulate the prefrontal cortex and motor cortex. In the week leading up to menstruation, the prefrontal cortex becomes out of balance. “This explains why women in and can’t explain why they’re sad.” By stimulating these parts, it brings the underactive part of the brain back into balance.

The design of the headband was intentional, to avoid the medical device appearing too clinical and able to be used in everyday scenarios, like going to work and being at the gym. The ability to go to the gym for some participants of the trial was revolutionary, and one that cemented this notion that menstrual pain has been accepted as a part of life, though shouldn’t necessarily have to be.

Whether being able to go to the gym or socialise with friends, “the primary thing we’re doing is giving women the control,” she stressed. “This is showing that we can be science first and acknowledge women’s issues, transforming our way of society and our relationship with ourselves.”

Seeing the experience of device users for the first time is an incredibly rewarding part of Radytė’s job. “Other feedback I’ve loved hearing as well has been from women who say, ‘If I decide to change something about my routine, I’m on it, and then five days before my period everything changes. My goals drop off and it’s difficult to get back into this routine’. Being consistent for themselves has been a very big deal.”

Working with a small team scaling up technology that has the potential to revolutionise women’s lives and challenge the notion that pain should be a part of women’s lives, Samphire Neuroscience has demonstrated what’s possible – and opens the future to many more possibilities.