The research question was almost embarrassingly simple: If Viagra works by relaxing smooth muscle tissue in the penis to allow blood flow, could CBD do something similar for women? The answer, it turned out, was yes. That discovery led Carolyn Wheeler and her co-founders to build Vella Bioscience around female arousal and orgasm. What surprised even them was where the science led next.
Wheeler, CEO and co-founder of Vella Bioscience, spent the company’s first five years proving that female sexual arousal is a physiological event, not a psychological one, and that the same scientific rigor applied to Viagra could be applied to women’s bodies.
Now she is turning that platform toward a different problem: the menstrual and pelvic pain that affects up to 90% of women who menstruate, a market worth $8.4 billion that nobody has yet built the infrastructure to serve.
A Multibillion-Dollar Market With No Owner
The menstrual pain products market—including OTC drugs, heat patches, wearable devices, topical—was valued at $8.4 billion globally in 2025 and is projected to reach $13.6 billion by 2035 in the U.S. alone, according to Global Market Insights. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists estimates that dysmenorrhea—painful menstruation—affects up to 90% of women who menstruate. That is not a niche population. That is the majority of women, for years of their lives.
And yet the category is still functionally fragmented. Period pain lives in one market. Vaginal dryness lives in another. Pelvic floor dysfunction, menopause symptoms, sexual discomfort each has its own analyst taxonomy, its own clinical codes, its own siloed product solutions. Women assemble the patchwork themselves including ibuprofen, a heating pad, a referral to pelvic physical therapy, maybe a CBD product found on Instagram. It’s a de facto market, untapped as yet.
Wheeler argues this is an architecture problem, not a product gap. Women’s physical comfort has been treated as a lifestyle category. What it actually is, she contends, is health infrastructure that was never built.
Built By The Team Behind Viagra For Women This Time
The science behind Vella’s newest product, Ebbtide, starts where the company started: smooth muscle.
Dr. Harin Padma-Nathan, the urologist who led clinical development for Viagra and Cialis, is a co-founder and chief medical officer at Vella. He brought that framework to the myometrium, the smooth muscle layer surrounding the uterus. Menstrual cramps occur when the myometrium contracts to expel the uterine lining. In primary dysmenorrhea, those contractions are more intense and more frequent, cutting off blood flow and causing pain that sends millions of women reaching for ibuprofen every month. Co-founder Nial DeMena previously co-founded Manna Molecular Science, a cannabis extract pharmaceutical manufacturer. He brought the cannabinoid expertise to that scientific framework.
Vella’s preclinical research identified a cannabinoid combination—CBD paired with CBDA, the raw acidic precursor to CBD found in hemp plants—that could address the muscle directly. CBDA proved significantly more potent than CBD at reducing uterine contractions. Tested at concentrations of 1, 10, and 100 μg/mL in ex vivo rat uterine tissue, CBDA showed superior potency (p<0.001), but came with a serious formulation problem.
“CBDA works a lot better than CBD in terms of relaxing,” Wheeler explains, “but it’s very difficult to stabilize, which is why you don’t see it in any formulas anywhere.” Vella’s lab outside Boston found the solution.
The result is Ebbtide, a vaginal suppository launched May 12 and available for purchase starting May 19. In an IRB-approved, 48-participant, single-cycle proof-of-concept study of women aged 21–35 with lifelong mild-to-severe dysmenorrhea, mean pain scores fell from 6.38 to 3.54—a statistically significant 44.4% reduction (p<0.0001).
Women who began with milder symptoms saw an even sharper drop: a 68.4% reduction (p<0.0001). Across all participants, 81% reduced their use of oral analgesics, and the suppository was well-tolerated, with most participants willing to use it again.
“Menstrual and pelvic discomfort are often minimized or normalized, but they shouldn’t be,” notes Dr. Maria Uloko, a board-certified urologist and member of Vella’s Scientific Advisory Board. “Ebbtide is different because it works at the physiological source of cramping and tension.” The underlying science developed by Vella’s R&D team focuses on reducing uterine contractility through a novel combination of CBD and CBDA. That scientific rigor translates into real-world impact: meaningful options for women navigating menstrual discomfort and more control over their daily lives.”
The Evidence Gap Is The Story
The consumer CBD market for intimate and menstrual health is crowded with brands and thin on science. Competitors including Foria, AIMA, and Harmony offer cannabinoid suppositories and topicals for period and pelvic pain but ACOG’s 2024 clinical consensus found “insufficient data to make a recommendation regarding the use of these products for management of pain associated with gynecologic conditions.”
Wearable device companies like Livia and Ovira approach the same problem from a different direction, with FDA-cleared transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation devices. Mass-market players like Rael expanded to 50,000 U.S. retail doors in 2025.
No consumer CBD competitor in the pelvic pain category has published the kind of clinical evidence Vella is building. That is the competitive moat and also an honest description of an entire category that has been running on testimonials. The science gap and the infrastructure gap are, it turns out, the same problem.
Oklahoma Money And A Global Mission
Vella has not taken institutional venture capital. The company has been built on angel investors including doctors, beauty industry veterans, and a cluster of Oklahoma-based backers who Wheeler describes as less interested in quick returns than in long-term impact.
Reed Oppenheimer, a Tulsa-based businessman, philanthropist, and Vella investor, explains his reasoning plainly. “I’ve spent my career focused on long-term impact, and women’s health is one of the most meaningful places to create it at a scale that touches roughly 50% of the planet. Vella is doing the work the right way: science-led, stigma-aware, and operationally rigorous. That’s why I’m in.”
Alongside the Ebbtide launch, Vella announced a partnership with PERIOD., the global nonprofit working to end period poverty and stigma, committing $15,000 in cash ahead of Menstrual Hygiene Day on May 28 and donating one menstrual care kit, including an Ebbtide eight-pack, for every subscription purchased, up to $15,000 in product annually for three years.
“Access to menstrual care is fundamental, yet so many people still lack the resources they need to manage their cycles with dignity,” observes Jennifer Herrera, executive director of PERIOD. “We’re excited to partner with Vella to expand access to care, including innovative solutions like Ebbtide that are designed to ease pelvic discomfort during menstruation. This partnership helps us continue our work to ensure that more of our PERIOD. leaders have access, not just to basic products, but to meaningful support for their menstrual health.”
What Gets Built When You Name The Gap
“The more words that exist to describe a woman’s body, the better our bodies will get taken care of,” Wheeler told Newsweek last fall. Ebbtide is an argument made in product form. “Ebbtide brings our founding vision to life,” Wheeler adds. “It’s the belief that women deserve science built around them, at every stage of their lives. From menstruation to menopause, too much has been left unaddressed for too long. Vella is here to serve women more holistically, across the full arc of their lives, with dignity and evidence-based care.”
