Advancing women's health via FDA Critical Path Initiative

Studying sex and gender differences is critical to understanding diseases that affect women solely, disproportionately or differently from men. Although inclusion of both sexes is essential in clinical research, advanced technology and analysis methods offer tools to define complex biological and physicochemical differences and improve prevention, diagnosis and treatments for diseases in women and men. This paper identifies the potential for biomarker development, pharmacogenetics and bioinformatics in research under the FDA Critical Path Initiative.

Section editor:Janet Woodcock – Food and Drug Administration, Rockville, Maryland, USA