A U.S. congressional commission has made the case for “swift action” to maintain the nation’s role as a biotech superpower, while warning the sector is “dangerously close to falling behind China.”
The report was published Tuesday by the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB), an independent commission that includes two members of the Senate and two from the House of Representatives split by party alongside “seven prominent industry leaders, academic experts, and former government officials from the defense and intelligence communities.”
The commission’s main recommendation is for the government to dedicate $15 billion over the next five years to “unleash more private capital into our national biotechnology sector.” This is one of a number of areas where the report's authors argue the U.S. needs to adopt a “more proactive posture” to biotech.
“Twenty years ago, the [Chinese government] made biotechnology a strategic priority,” the commission said in its report. “The U.S. government’s approach has been piecemeal and uncoordinated, and we still lack the high-level departmental and agency leadership we need to execute a national biotechnology strategy.”
In practice, this would involve Congress setting up a National Biotechnology Coordination Office in the Executive Office of the President, which would be empowered to “coordinate interagency actions on biotechnology competition and regulation.”
The report contains a raft of measures that Congress could enact to “leverage our capital markets to advance national biotechnology priorities.” These include creating “simple pathways” for drugs to market, establishing an investment fund for tech startups that strengthen national security and defining biotechs’ data as “critical infrastructure.” When it comes to accessing these data, the report recommends that the Department of Energy create a single point of entry.
Meanwhile, Congress should direct the Department of Energy and the Department of Health and Human Services to “smooth out unpredictable and inconsistent demand for biotechnology products through advance market commitments (AMCs) and offtake agreements and provide new authorities where necessary,” the report’s authors said.
As well as its use in health, the document sets out a wide range of ways that biotech could contribute to national defense and resilience aims. It cited applications such as reshoring the production of chemicals used in munitions, synthesizing food for soldiers on the front lines and helping miners unlock deposits of key minerals.
With one eye on China, the commission recommended that Congress require biotechs to “disclose single points of supply chain vulnerability located in foreign countries of concern” and urged the International Trade Commission to investigate “Chinese dumping or oversupply of biotechnology products and services.”
“The United States is locked in a competition with China that will define the coming century,” NSCEB Chair Senator Todd Young said in a release to accompany the report
“Biotechnology can ensure our warfighters continue to be the strongest fighting force on tomorrow's battlefields, and reshore supply chains while revitalizing our manufacturing sector, creating jobs here at home,” Young added.
The commission's recommendations come against a backdrop of severe and wide-ranging cuts to funding and staff at U.S. health agencies. At a session of the Biopharma Congress this week, Janet Woodcock, M.D., former acting FDA commissioner and former principal deputy commissioner of food and drugs, said leadership at the agency has “been decapitated, and I think that was somewhat deliberate.”