On September 23, 2020, the National Academies’ Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders will host a public workshop on transcriptomic differences in the brains of women versus men with brain disorders.
In 2010, the National Academies hosted a workshop on sex differences and implications for translational research, which outlined the public health importance of studying sex differences in the nervous system and considered other important aspects of the field. Five years later, the National Institutes of Health introduced a new requirement for inclusion of sex as a biological variable in animal research. This policy change, among other initiatives, has led to increased recognition of sex differences across disease states, particularly in relation to clinical care and treatment outcomes in neuropsychiatric disorders. With the recent advent of unbiased genome-wide data, we now have more insight into the biological underpinnings of these differences than ever before.
In light of these advances, the upcoming Sex Differences in Brain Disorders: Emerging Transcriptomic Evidence and Implications for Therapeutic Development workshop will bring together experts from academia, government, industry, and non-profit organizations to discuss emerging evidence for differences in transcriptomic abnormalities that occur in the brains of women versus men with a range of brain disorders, including depression, drug addiction, neurodegenerative disorders, and others. John Ngai, BRAIN Initiative Director, will be speaking about considering sex differences in BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network (BICCN) projects.
Workshop presentations and discussions are designed to:
- Review the current landscape of emerging evidence of these sex differences and consider how this can be used to advance our understanding of brain disorder pathophysiology.
- Explore ramifications for therapeutic development for brain disorders, including identification of new targets, implications for preclinical and clinical study design, and others.
- Discuss open research questions and identify opportunities to move the field forward.
The workshop will take place on Wednesday, September 23rd from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm (ET). Please view the full agenda provided by the National Academies.
Registration for the workshop is still open! Please register here.