Despite constituting over half of the global population, research on women's health conditions remains severely lacking. To address these challenges, the U.S. National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Office of Research in Women's Health commissioned the National Academies to evaluate the current landscape of women's health research at NIH.

While NIH grant funding has increased from FY2013 to FY 2023 in both dollars spent and the number of projects funded, the proportion of funding for research related to women's health remained low and decreased during the same period (from 9.7% to 7.9%).

In addition, the report also highlights the many imbalances within the area. As an example, endometriosis research funding, which affects about 10 percent of reproductive age women, is $2 per patient, while diabetes funding, which affects about 3–7 percent of reproductive age women, is $31 per patient, or 15 times more, for the same peer group.

One of the main recommendations from the report is the creation of a new Women’s Health Research Institute. The new WHR Institute should provide a home for the study of health conditions that predominantly or exclusively affect women and greatly impair the quality of millions of women’s lives, including conditions such as endometriosis, uterine fibroids, the menopause transition, pelvic floor disorder, vulvodynia, and polycystic ovary syndrome, which no NIH Institute or Center currently prioritizes.

At Gesynta Pharma, we remain dedicated to advancing women's health through our upcoming Phase II clinical study of vipoglanstat for endometriosis patients.

Download the report, A New Vision for Women's Health Research: Transformative Change at the National Institutes of Health, here: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/28586/a-new-vision-for-womens-health-research-transformative-change-at