The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) undermines the search for safer, effective replacements for opioids,explains BIO. “Effective pain medicines generally must be small molecules, a key attribute that helps the therapies cross the blood-brain barrier to access the nervous system.” However, the IRA’s “pill penalty” discourages small molecule drugs by making them vulnerable to price controls earlier. Read at Bio.News.
“Beware elected leaders who would weaken patents,” warns Daniel M. Skovronsky, CSO of BIO member Eli Lilly, writing in STAT News. “Likely more than in any other industry, patents are essential to incentivize R&D in biopharmaceuticals due to the extremely lengthy, costly, and risky nature of drug development.”
Candidates push soundbites on medical costs, but many of these ideas won’t work, explains BIO Board member Fritz Bittenbender, SVP at Genentech, in STAT News. “Some of the soundbite policy proposals that candidates bring up for short-term political impact could in practice have consequences that lead to less innovative medicines, significant job loss, and diminishment of America’s global leadership in the development of medicines. Perhaps most importantly, in the end they won’t make medicines more affordable for patients.”
“Good intentions without good policy are only good intentions,” cautions Sebastian Guth, COO of Bayer Pharmaceuticals in a STAT News opinion piece. “Meaningful progress must ensure fair market practices, fix the PBM and 340B broken programs, protect innovation and safeguard intellectual property. It’s the only way to turn good intention into good policy that makes the next cure possible.”
“We are anticipating an opinion coming out of the [U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement] panel in the very near future,”said USDA’s Chief Agriculture Negotiator, Doug McKalip, of the dispute against Mexico’s biotech corn ban. “We’ve got to ensure that countries don’t backslide on science and that we continue to export into all of those markets.”
