It’s been almost one month since Fidji Simo announced she would not return to her role as the No. 2 exec at OpenAI because of the fragile state of her health. My colleague Emily Forlini, who covers AI for Fortune, just published the first interview with Simo since she left her position.
Simo told Emily that her health is “physically the worst [it’s] ever been.” But she is still working on an important project: her company ChronicleBio, which aims to find cures to complex conditions like POTS, which is what Simo has. These are often conditions that mostly affect women and that can leave patients completely disabled—sensitive to light and sound, spending most of their time in a completely dark room with no stimulation. But they don’t cause death, which is another reason research into these diseases doesn’t get funded.
The company is trying to solve a specific problem in clinical trials, which is that diseases like POTS often have “sub-diseases,” with different underlying genetic causes contributing to the same set of symptoms. A drug could work well for one sub-disease, but not most patients, and right now the trial would likely be canceled. As Emily explains, ChronicleBio is “finding patients with similar symptoms, grouping them together, and then testing drugs on those subgroups so the trial is more likely to be successful.”
In its first year, ChronicleBio has performed 890 blood draws from 709 patients in Utah, Arizona, Texas, and India. It has over 3,500 tubes of blood in its biobank and has extracted 153 terabytes of data from the blood. It’s raised $15 million to date, and next week is launching a sign-up link for mobile phlebotomy trucks to come to the homes of people with certain chronic diseases. Participants will get an in-depth report on their condition, free for the first 250 people. In exchange, they’ll give their biological data to ChronicleBio to help with this mission.
Simo and Emily talked at length about this work and what it means to the longtime exec to be able to tackle it, even while she’s had to take a step back from her main career path.
“It’s obviously a horrible disease, and I certainly wish I could have dodged it. But at the same time, I think it has given me enormous meaning,” she says. Read the full conversation here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
Some new execs to know. Incoming Apple CEO John Ternus brought back a retired exec to be part of his team. Laura Legros was VP of hardware engineering until retiring in 2022; during her career, she managed product delivery, development schedules, and coordination across engineering teams. Meanwhile, McDonald's just named a new U.S. president as it seeks a turnaround amid slowing growth. Skye Anderson is taking over after serving as COO for the U.S.
A congressman might be censured by the House over sexual harassment. A committee just found that Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) violated rules related to sexual harassment with attention he directed to two young female staffers—especially showering them with gifts, which included $1,000 in jewelry, designer bags, and matching pink and blue handguns. He's denied he did anything wrong.
Netflix is paying $200 million for the Women's World Cup. The 2023 World Cup was the first time FIFA even sold broadcast rights to the women's tournament separately. Now this deal for 2027 will be one of the biggest deals on an annual basis for a women's sports property, slightly below the WNBA's.
Sen. Susan Collins' vote for Brett Kavanaugh is haunting her on the campaign trail. The Maine Republican was the deciding vote to confirm the Supreme Court justice in 2018, who went on to overturn Roe v. Wade. Now, in her first reelection campaign since the end of Roe, Mainers no longer see her as "a moderate Republican who is unafraid to break ranks."
ON MY RADAR
The push to force genital exams on student athletes The Cut
The only thing more surprising than Cracker Barrel CEO's exit may be its pick to replace her Fortune
Ariana Grande and the debate over health, privacy, and celebrity NYT
PARTING WORDS
"Women don't method act because we have things to take care of, so we can't completely lose our minds."
— Anya Taylor-Joy's take on method acting (currently going viral)