Center for Life Sciences Innovation
ITIF’s Center for Life Sciences Innovation advocates for accelerating biopharmaceutical innovation by recognizing that the public and private sectors both have essential roles to play. The Center’s mission is to study and advance the many technology, economic, and policy factors underpinning successful life sciences innovation—from how new technologies like artificial intelligence, genomics, and gene editing are powering the next generation of biomedical innovation to the economics of life sciences innovation, including the role of IP and incentives therein; international competitiveness in life sciences innovation; and foremost the optimal set of public policies, at home and abroad, to spur greater levels of much-needed biopharmaceutical innovation.
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Featured Publications
Events
April 4, 2023
Lessons From the Rise and Fall of Japan’s Life-Sciences Innovation Ecosystem
Tune in for an expert panel discussion examining where Japan faltered in this sector, what it must do to restore its life-sciences innovation leadership and competitiveness, why that would be in the best interests of both Japan and the United States—and what America must do to avoid following in Japan’s footsteps.
March 24, 2023
Preserving a Virtuous Cycle: The Economics of Biopharmaceutical Innovation
Watch the release event of a new report that examines the dynamics that underpin the economics of biopharmaceutical innovation and how to maintain a supportive environment that keeps the United States in the lead of life-sciences innovation.
March 29, 2022
How Using March-in Rights Would Threaten America’s Research Universities
ITIF hosted a panel discussion with leading experts on innovation policy, technology transfer, and business, who spoke to the practical implications of exercising federal “march-in” rights and why it would be a grave and ill-timed mistake for the U.S. health, competitiveness, and research landscape.
April 29, 2021
How Intellectual Property Has Played a Pivotal Role in the Global COVID-19 Response
ITIF hosted an expert panel discussion about the report and the vital role IP has played throughout the pandemic.
April 21, 2021
Seizing the Transformative Opportunity of Multi-cancer Early Detection
ITIF hosted an expert panel discussion exploring the groundbreaking innovations and policy considerations impacting the field of multi-cancer early detection.
Staff

Vice President, Global Innovation Policy, and Director, Center for Life Sciences Innovation
Advisors

Cain Brothers & Company Professor of Healthcare, Columbia University Graduate School of Business
More From the Center
August 21, 2023|Reports & Briefings
Preserving US Biopharma Leadership: Why Small, Research-Intensive Firms Matter in the US Innovation Ecosystem
America is home to 85 percent of the world’s small, research-intensive biopharma firms. These start-ups are critical to drug development and U.S. competitiveness. Congress should make targeted changes to tax policy to incentivize them and maintain U.S. biopharma leadership.
August 18, 2023|Testimonies & Filings
Comments to the National Institutes of Health on “Maximizing NIH’s Levers to Catalyze Technology Transfer”
The technology-transfer regime the United States has implemented over the past four decades, largely as enabled through the Bayh-Dole Act, has been tremendously effective in stimulating innovation, especially in the life sciences. While all such processes should be continuously streamlined or tweaked where improvement is possible, the current system does not need serious modification or reform.
July 10, 2023|Testimonies & Filings
Comments Before the US Senate Help Committee Regarding the “Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act”
Recognizing the long history of failed efforts to include reasonable pricing clauses in NIH licensing activities, policymakers should reject provisions in the PAHPA Act that would cap the U.S. cost of any products resulting from federal funding “at the lowest price among G7 countries” and do so “at a reasonable price.”
March 30, 2023|Testimonies & Filings
Testimony to the US International Trade Commission Regarding COVID-19 Diagnostics and Therapeutics: Supply, Demand, and TRIPS Agreement Flexibilities
A TRIPS IPR waiver for COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics is unnecessary, unwarranted, and even counterproductive—just as it was for COVID-19 vaccines.
January 25, 2023|Reports & Briefings
How Off-Label Use of Medicines Drives Health-Care Use and Disability
Peer-reviewed research finds that pharmaceutical innovation provides direct and indirect benefits for health-care use and disability.
August 5, 2022|Blogs
Senate Reconciliation Legislation Fails to Reconcile the Interests of Biomedical Innovation and Drug Price Affordability
The bill fails to recognize three critical realities: 1) that drug prices are, in fact, not a significant driver of raging inflation; 2) that there exist better mechanisms to reform Medicare Part D drug pricing practices; 3) that mandated government price controls do inflict serious harm on nations’ life-sciences innovation systems.
July 8, 2022|Blogs
Senate Democrats’ Drug Price Proposal Would Slow the Pace of New Drug Discovery
Congress should ignore pressure from progressive activists who want to use drug price controls to move to a government-led drug discovery and production system and instead focus on more pragmatic reforms.