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Life Sciences

Innovation is essential to promoting human health, agricultural productivity, and ecological sustainability. ITIF’s Center for Life Sciences Innovation conducts research supporting advances in human biotechnology; pharmaceuticals; and health care policy outside the realm of IT.

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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.

Testimony to the Senate Finance Committee on “Prescription Drug Price Inflation”

Testimony to the Senate Finance Committee on “Prescription Drug Price Inflation”

Expenditures for retail prescriptions have been roughly stable for the past two decades as a share of total U.S. health-care expenditures. Instead of applying broad price controls, policymakers should promote affordability and mitigate out-of-pocket costs for individuals.

More Publications and Events

September 14, 2023|Events

Innovation and Competitiveness: GTIPA Summit, 2023

Join members of the Global Trade and Innovation Policy Alliance (GTIPA) for a series of expert panel discussions on technology and innovation policy. Topics will include the keys to subnational innovation competitiveness in Europe and South America, optimal ways to stimulate life sciences innovation, how digital technologies can drive decarbonization, and the possibilities for reimaging value chains in the global trading system.

September 5, 2023|Reports & Briefings

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.

August 30, 2023|Blogs

White House Names the First 10 Drugs Up for Medicare Price Negotiations; Misguided Attempt to Control Drug Prices Only Hurts Patients Long-Term

The IRA Medicare drug negotiations represent a poorly crafted policy with many direct and unintended consequences for biopharmaceutical innovation. Rather, this short-term win for government drug price-setting advocates will likely lead to long-term harms that patients will feel for decades.

August 22, 2023|Presentations

Seizing the Transformative Opportunity of Multi-cancer Early Detection

Stephen Ezell gave a presentation on “Seizing the Transformative Opportunity of Multi-cancer Early Detection” at the 15th Annual Next Generation Dx Summit in Washington, DC on August 22, 2023.

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.”

April 4, 2023|Events

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 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.

March 24, 2023|Events

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.

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