Future Focused 

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I recently came across some alarming statistics. According to the 2022 US figures, only one percent of the approximately US$200 billion spent on healthcare research and development focuses on women’s health. As a result, half of the population is left behind the health innovation curve (1). This startling limited funding for women’s health is even more concerning as women have much higher susceptibility for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, two third of people diagnosed with AD are women. One in five women are affected by anxiety. About twice as many women as men experience depression. In general, neuropsychiatric disorders in women is greatly underfunded.  Women have up to a fourfold increase in risk for autoimmune diseases like Multiple sclerosis and lupus as compared to men. Women are disproportionately affected by osteoporosis.  For years, researchers and funding agencies attributed these differences to hormonal and sex differences. However, simply not researching the causes and biological factors why women are suffering from these diseases at such higher numbers has been a great failure of funding agencies.  Simply, while women are half of the population, the funding for women’s health has lagged behind many other areas. The long term problems are what we see today which is lack of understanding of the differences and what it means when we are trying to treat women for these diseases. 

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I know many have heard of the “White House Initiative On Women’s Health” (2).  Late last year, the US President Biden signed a The Presidential Memorandum on Women’s Health Research on November 13th, 2023. That means that the U.S. has allocated $100M to ARPA-H Spring for women’s health.  The new attention to women’s health is not unique to the U.S. as in the UK and across Europe in other countries, there has also been new interest in funding women’s health and starting new initiatives.  In fact, SMDG was recently selected to be part of a new and the first of its kind Femtech and Women’s Health cohort, by the Discovery Park, UK.  This selection was in recognition of our continued work on developing therapies for neurological and immune disorder diseases and utilising our therapeutic platforms in studies that greatly benefit women’s health. Please contact us if you would like to learn more about our programmes on women’s health.  This is an expanding area of research for us so you will be hearing a lot more about this in the coming months.  We believe that our future-focused research programmes make great strides towards better understanding of why women are disproportionately affected by some of these diseases and developing new therapies that benefit women.  We are embarking on a new era in women’s health research.

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I also wanted to share some other recent news with you.  It has been a great honour to have been invited and serving as a biotech CEO advisor on the North East Economy Advisory (NECA) committee. NECA is a combined authority in North East England and has a directly-elected Mayor, recently elected, Ms Kim Boroughs and seven member councils; two county unitary authorities (Durham and Northumberland) and five metropolitan boroughs (Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, and Sunderland).  My role along with the other committee members has been to advocate and advice on issues related to our area of expertise.  I have been an advocate for advancing life sciences investment and support and promoting education. As a woman CEO of a small biotech I also represent a community of innovators and scientists in the North East. 

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Another great piece of news that I would like to share with you is that Professor Moein Moghimi, our Co-Founder and inventor of our therapeutic platforms was recently appointed as the Editor in Chief of the prestigious journal of "Drug Delivery".  Drug Delivery is a Taylor and Francis Journal and publishes open access peer-reviewed research on the development and application principles of drug delivery and targeting at molecular, cellular, and higher levels.  Drug Delivery aims to serve both the academic and industrial communities and publishes papers on the following topics and the journal publishes all drug delivery systems and all modes of drug entry, such as controlled release systems, microcapsules, liposomes, vesicles, and macromolecular conjugates, antibody targeting, protein/peptide delivery, DNA, oligonucleotide and siRNA delivery. We congratulate Professor Moghimi on this new appointment.

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As always our greatest focus and mission is bringing our life saving therapies to patients so join our mission, support us and partner with us. Please do not hesitate to reach out, get in touch and meet us at any of the upcoming meetings and events this year. 

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Shadi 

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June 2024

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References:

(1)  The Medicine Maker, Issue, July/August 2022.  www.themedicinemaker.com

(2)   The White House Initiative On Women’s Health

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