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BIO hit the American road again, this time to Richmond, VA to meet with Virginia Bio, local entrepreneurs and patient advocates, and a company that's reshoring production of advanced pharmaceutical ingredients. Plus a look back at BIO 2025 conversations on IP and AMR. (662 words, 3 minutes, 18 seconds) |
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BIO on the American Road: Virginia |
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BIO President and CEO John F. Crowley led a BIO listening tour through the booming biotech ecosystem around Richmond, VA, the latest stop for BIO on the American Road.
By the numbers: Virginia’s nearly 3,500 bioscience businesses employed more than 30K people in 2023. Gov. Glenn Youngkin, BIO’s Governor of the Year in 2024, allocated $90 million for Virginia’s Research Triangle, focused on biotech.
A reshoring beachhead: BIO visited Phlow, a Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)-funded facility that’s reshoring advanced pharmaceutical ingredients (API) production for essential medicines. APIs are now mostly produced in India and China—a strategic weakness in our medical supply chain.
“Just as all politics is local, biotech is local, too,” Crowley said, praising Phlow’s work. He also echoed Phlow’s leadership in noting the facility’s importance in the entire country's biotech goals.
“What do you need to succeed?” Crowley asked at a meeting of representatives of local firms. They mentioned a need to invest in the workforce and to copy incentives other states use. Virginia Bio CEO John Newby noted that Virginia’s business-friendly environment ranked fourth-best in the U.S. by CNBC last week, also promoting the state's educational system and workforce.
What they’re saying: “We're really thankful to have BIO as a partner,” said Newby. “BIO’s voice is extremely powerful and impactful, not just at the federal level, but the state level, as well.”
What's next: BIO on the American Road visits Houston on Sept. 15.
Read more on Bio.News.
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Photo: BIO President and CEO John F. Crowley (right) toured Phlow’s state-of-the-art pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Petersburg, Virginia.
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Given the essential role that intellectual property plays in developing lifesaving innovation, we need to defend and strengthen IP protections, said experts at the 2025 BIO International Convention last month.
Why IP matters: “Patents and other IP protections support the high-risk, high-cost journey from early research to real treatments,” said moderator Sarah Alspach, EVP and Chief Communications Officer at BIO. Panelists agreed: IP enables biotech investment.
The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which allows universities or other recipients of federal research grants to retain patents rights of any resulting inventions, sparked an innovation boom that made the U.S. number one in biotech, explained Bayh-Dole advocate Joe Allen, who worked on the legislation.
Don’t march in: The Biden administration threatened to achieve price controls by misusing a Bayh-Dole provision allowing the government to “march in” and take unused IP in a health emergency. Allen and other panelists said the Trump administration must officially renounce that plan.
Other threats to IP and innovation: Panelists mentioned concerning legislation that might have a negative impact on IP and innovation. They were also concerned that the government’s role in feeding the process supported by Bayh-Dole would be endangered by cuts in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding.
“IP really enabled every drug that’s coming to the market today,” said Erika Smith, CEO of EpiTET Therapeutics. “Without IP, you really don’t have the piece to invest in, so it’s absolutely critical.” Read more on Bio.News. |
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George Tidmarsh, M.D. appointed director of CDER. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced the appointment of George Francis Tidmarsh, M.D. as Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). "Dr. Tidmarsh earned his M.D. and Ph.D. in cancer biology from Stanford University where he completed residency training in pediatrics," the FDA said. "Dr. Tidmarsh has led the successful clinical development of seven FDA-approved drugs and served as founder and CEO of multiple biopharmaceutical companies focused on oncology and critical care medicine." Read more here.
BIO 2025: AMR adds to challenges of cancer treatment. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a threat to public health but poses particular danger to cancer patients, said experts at the BIO International Convention in Boston last month. Patients receiving cancer treatments have weakened immune systems, and hospitals have high instances of AMR, which occurs when pathogens mutate to develop an immunity to existing antibiotics or antifungals. Read more on Bio.News.
AI and upskilling enhance life sciences workforce, report finds. The seventh Life Sciences Workforce Trends Report, from the Life Sciences Workforce Collaborative in conjunction with TEConomy, is based on a survey of over 500 companies, 200 executives, and 2.9 million job postings. While hiring is down slightly, companies are prioritizing upskilling and engaging students earlier, according to the report. Read more on Bio.News.
Study finds aluminum in vaccine safe; no link to autism. A new study of 1,224,176 children in Denmark found that aluminum, a common adjuvant used in vaccines to enhance the body’s immune response, did not increase risk of autism or 50 other conditions. The study confirms long-standing data showing the safety of aluminum as an adjuvant, confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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BIO Women's Health Task Force fly-in. Members of BIO's Women's Health Task Force took to Capitol Hill on July 15. They met with lawmakers to highlight the vital role of female hashtagbiotech leaders in driving U.S. innovation and advocating for robust investments in women's health research.
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A Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions executive session on nominations is to include discussion of the nomination of Brian Christine to be Assistant Secretary for Health. |
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