The importance of sex and gender in preclinical and clinical research

The Department of Life Sciences (DoLS) at Imperial College London presents the researchers from the Wellcome funded MESSAGE (Medical Science Sex and Gender Equity) project. This research and policy initiative brings together the UK research sector to improve integration of sex and gender in biomedical, health and care research.

MESSAGE is hosted at the George Institute for Global Health and Imperial College London, and responds to preliminary research showing in 2021 not a single UK research funder had a policy in place requiring researchers to consider the sex and/or gender of research participants, and to sex- and/or gender-disaggregate data when analysing and reporting findings. This is in contrast to the US, Canada and Europe, who have longstanding sex and gender policies for research, and has led to a dearth of evidence on critical sex and gender differences across all areas of medicine, leading to worse health outcomes and greater health inequity.

This talk will highlight the importance of sex and gender in preclinical and clinical studies and present a sex and gender policy framework for UK research funders, which sets a new gold standard for excellence and equity in UK research practice, recently adopted by the NIHR, Wellcome and other major UK research funders.