This interdisciplinary study examines whether global life science research tracks the global burden of disease and how shifts in the research policy and funding landscape could reshape that alignment in the future. We link 8.6 million disease-specific publications (1999–2021) to two decades of DALY data using a triangulated approach—physician validation, ICD crosswalk, and a large language model—to map research effort against disease burden by cause, region, and funder.

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Our analyses show the global research–disease divergence has roughly halved since 1999, driven largely by shifts in disease burden (not by research priorities), with localized communicable diseases becoming more aligned and global noncommunicable diseases increasingly misaligned. Forward-looking simulations indicate divergence will rise again—by ~50% by 2050 absent deliberate realignment. The study calls for strategic investment, open science, and more equitable global coordination. 

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This study, co-authored with Leo Schmallenbach and Till Bärnighausen, investigates how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping life sciences on a global scale. Our study highlights significant geographic disparities in AI research productivity, quality, and impact within the life sciences, using metrics such as publication volume, citation rates, and international collaboration networks.

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Our findings reveal that while some regions, like Asia, lead in publication numbers, others, notably Western countries, produce more high-impact research. This work underscores the need for balanced global support to leverage AI advancements effectively in life sciences for a broader societal benefit.

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Women remain underrepresented on faculties of medicine and in the life sciences more broadly. Whether gender differences in self presentation of clinical research exist and may contribute to this gender gap has been challenging to explore empirically. The objective of this study was to analyze whether men and women differ in how positively they frame their research findings and to analyze whether the positive framing of research is associated with higher downstream citations.

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We find clinical articles involving a male first or last author were more likely to present research findings positively in titles and abstracts compared with articles in which both the first and last author were women, particularly in the highest impact journals. Positive presentation of research findings was associated with higher downstream citations.

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We examined the extent to which and why early career transitions have led to women being underrepresented among faculty in the life sciences. We followed the careers of 6,336 scientists from the post-doctoral fellowship stage to becoming a principal investigator (PI) – a critical transition in the academic life sciences. Using a unique dataset that connects individuals’ National Institutes of Health funding histories to their publication records, we found that a large portion of the overall gender gap in the life sciences emerges at this transition. Women become PIs at a 20% lower rate than men. Differences in “productivity” (publication records) can explain about 60% of this differential. The remaining portion appears to stem from gender differences in the returns to similar publication records, with women receiving less credit for their citations.

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Women remain underrepresented on life science faculties in general, and on cardiovascular research faculties in particular. Whether differences in prestigious authorships contribute to this gender gap remains unclear. We analyzed 63,636 authorships on NIH-R01-supported articles across 107 cardiovascular journals indexed in PubMed to estimate the relative risk (RR) of first and last authorship for women relative to men. We analyzed how the RR varied over 30 years, focusing on studies in cardiovascular research, but we also extended our analysis to 2,699,061 authorships on R01-supported articles across 3,849 journals indexed in PubMed and sub-analyzed the RR for journals of different impact. In cardiology, women’s likelihood of first authorship improved from being about 20% less likely to being 5% more likely to earn first authorships relative to men. Meanwhile, women remained about 50% less likely to earn last authorships. Across the life sciences, women have come to earn first authorships up to a 20% higher rate than men, while the likelihood of last authorship remained low, similar to cardiovascular research.

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