Özdemir Berna C, Richters Anke, Espinosa da Silva Cristina, Berner Alison May
Department of Medical Oncology, Inselspital Bern, Bern University Hospital, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
The Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organisation, Department of Research and Development, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
iScience. 2023 Feb 16;26(4):106212. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106212. eCollection 2023 Apr 21.
Sex differences in cancer risk and outcome are currently a topic of major interest in clinical oncology. It is however unknown to what extent cancer researchers consider sex as a biological variable for their research. We conducted an international survey among 1243 academic cancer researchers and collected both quantitative and qualitative data. Although most of the participants indicated that they were familiar with the concept of studying sex differences in cancer biology, they did not think it was important to investigate sex differences in every context of cancer research nor in all tumor types. This is in stark contrast to the current recommendations and guidelines and illustrates the need for increased awareness among cancer researchers regarding the potential impact of the sex of cell lines, animals, and human samples in their studies.
癌症风险和预后方面的性别差异目前是临床肿瘤学中一个备受关注的话题。然而，癌症研究人员在多大程度上把性别视为其研究中的一个生物学变量尚不清楚。我们对1243名学术癌症研究人员进行了一项国际调查，并收集了定量和定性数据。尽管大多数参与者表示他们熟悉在癌症生物学中研究性别差异的概念，但他们并不认为在癌症研究的每个方面以及所有肿瘤类型中研究性别差异都很重要。这与当前的建议和指南形成了鲜明对比，也表明癌症研究人员需要提高对细胞系、动物和人类样本的性别在其研究中的潜在影响的认识。
