Posts Tagged: "National Institutes of Health"

NIH Tech Transfer Workshop Underscores Fight to Properly Characterize Federal Drug Pricing Authority

On July 31, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) hosted a virtual workshop titled Transforming Discoveries into Products: Maximizing NIH’s Levers to Catalyze Technology Transfer. Public comments submitted to the NIH ahead of the event reflect current tensions between advocates supporting either private commercialization or government pricing control of federally-funded medical breakthroughs commercialized by private companies.

Senator Sanders’ Amendment Dooms NIH-Supported Innovation

Rattled by the failure of the Biden Administration to bow to pressure to misuse the march-in rights provision of the Bayh-Dole Act so the government can regulate prices on products based on federally funded inventions, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his allies are doubling down. And the impact of National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported research is now in jeopardy. Sanders taunted the Administration, pledging to hold up the nomination of Dr. Monica Bertagnolli to head the NIH until President Biden submits to his demands to do more to control drug prices, including requiring that any therapy-based on an invention arising from NIH funding must be sold at a “reasonable price.”

GIPC Letter to Senators Pushes Back on ‘False Narrative’ Exaggerating Public Role in Private Drug Development

On March 22, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) sent a letter addressed to Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), respectively the Chair and Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, regarding a Health Committee hearing held that same day on the pricing of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. The GIPC’s letter sought to push back on false narratives regarding the role of public funding in private pharmaceutical research & development (R&D,) and also doubled down on the Center’s criticisms of drug pricing controls in the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act.

NIH Makes Deal with WHO to Share Key COVID Technologies

The United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) signed a deal today with the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) and the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) that allows manufacturers greater access to key COVID-19 technologies owned by NIH. The licensing agreement offers 11 technologies under transparent, global and non-exclusive licenses. They include “the stabilized spike protein used in currently available COVID-19 vaccines, research tools for vaccine, therapeutic and diagnostic development as well as early-stage vaccine candidates and diagnostics.”

Misusing March-in Rights for Price Control: A Dagger to the Heart of Small Companies

As Knowledge Ecology International and its allies await the decision of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on their latest attempt to misuse the Bayh-Dole Act for the government to set prices on any product based on a federally funded invention, they’re growing more uneasy. And that’s understandable. If you’d bet the house on an ivory tower theory that’s been summarily rejected for the past 18 years every time it’s been trotted out, you’d be uneasy too. They know that if the Biden Administration rejects the pending petition to march in on the prostate cancer drug Xtandi because of its cost, this leaky vessel can’t be credibly refloated again.