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Center for Life Sciences Innovation

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.

Featured Publications

How Skeptics Misconstrue the Link Between Drug Prices and Innovation

How Skeptics Misconstrue the Link Between Drug Prices and Innovation

A recent article in the British Medical Journal contends “high drug prices” are neither necessary nor justified to sustain biopharmaceutical innovation. But it misrepresents and misinterprets the facts, highlighting how faulty the rationale is for drug price controls.

Preserving US Biopharma Leadership: Why Small, Research-Intensive Firms Matter in the US Innovation Ecosystem

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.

The Hidden Toll of Drug Price Controls: Fewer New Treatments and Higher Medical Costs for the World

The Hidden Toll of Drug Price Controls: Fewer New Treatments and Higher Medical Costs for the World

When nations implement pharmaceutical price controls, they reduce pharmaceutical revenues, which then reduces investments in further R&D, limiting future generations’ access to new novel treatments needed to fight diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and diabetes.

The Economics of Biopharmaceutical Innovation: Symposium Report

The Economics of Biopharmaceutical Innovation: Symposium Report

Investments in biopharmaceutical innovation and expenditures on medicines themselves both produce tremendous societal returns. Maintaining the robust innovation ecosystem necessary to capitalize on these benefits requires the right mix of “push” and “pull” incentives.

How Japan Squandered Its Biopharmaceutical Competitiveness: A Cautionary Tale

How Japan Squandered Its Biopharmaceutical Competitiveness: A Cautionary Tale

Stringent drug price controls have significantly hampered the competitive and innovative capacity of Japan’s biopharmaceutical industry in recent decades, serving as a warning for U.S. policymakers considering introducing Medicare Part D drug price controls in 2022.

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Events

March 5, 2024

Preserving U.S. Leadership in Biopharmaceutical Innovation

Watch now for an expert panel discussion surrounding the ITIF report examining why the United States lost its lead in other advanced technology industries, and how policymakers can avoid repeating the same mistakes in the biopharmaceutical sector.

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.

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Staff

Sandra Barbosu
Sandra Barbosu

Senior Policy Manager

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Stephen Ezell
Stephen Ezell

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

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Advisors

Bill Andresen
Bill Andresen

Associate Vice President for Federal Affairs

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David Beier
David Beier

Managing Director

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Frank R. Lichtenberg
Frank R. Lichtenberg

Cain Brothers & Company Professor of Healthcare Management in the Faculty of Business

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Catherine Marinac
Catherine Marinac

Assistant Professor of Medicine

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Gary Puckrein
Gary Puckrein

Founding President and CEO

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More From the Center

February 29, 2024|Reports & Briefings

Not Again: Why the United States Can’t Afford to Lose Its Biopharma Industry

America’s leadership in advanced-technology industries can never be taken for granted, as evidenced by its losses in telecommunications equipment, semiconductors, televisions, solar panels, and chemicals. Policymakers must recognize what went wrong in those cases to avoid a similar industrial decline in the biopharmaceutical industry.

February 6, 2024|Testimonies & Filings

Comments to the NIST Regarding the Draft Interagency Guidance Framework for Considering the Exercise of March-In Rights

America’s innovation system is fragile, and its leadership in advanced technology industries is never guaranteed or assured. The United States has taken—only to sacrifice—its lead in a wide-range of advanced technology industries, often in part because of significant policy lapses. It’s no time for additional unforced errors.

January 31, 2024|Testimonies & Filings

Comments to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Regarding the WHO Pandemic Preparedness Agreement

The United States should not endorse an IPR waiver in the WHO Pandemic Preparedness Agreement. It would not increase the number of vaccines or therapeutics, or the global supply that might be needed to address a future global pandemic.

December 11, 2023|Blogs

Biden’s Assertion of Excessive Biopharma Industry Concentration Is a Flawed Rationale for a Flawed Policy

The administration is flat wrong that America’s biopharmaceutical industry is excessively concentrated. It’s also flat wrong that U.S. drug prices are rising out of control.

November 13, 2023|Testimonies & Filings

Comments to the European Commission Regarding the EU General Pharmaceuticals Legislation

Changes proposed in the EU General Pharmaceutical Legislation would double down on policies that hinder, not enable, EU life-sciences innovation potential, while forsaking other avenues that could more effectively enhance access without compromising innovation.

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.”

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