Weekly Policy Update: CBSA Hosts Congressional Briefing on the Impacts of Reference Pricing

CBSA partnered with We Work for Health Colorado this week to host a briefing for Colorado congressional offices about the impacts of international reference pricing on our innovation ecosystem. Duane Shulthess, managing director of Vital Transformation, discussed their recent study about how reference pricing proposals, like HR 3, would reduce investments in research and development and devastate the pipeline of new treatments for patients.

The report also highlights the impact on small and mid-size life sciences companies, which make up the majority of Colorado’s life sciences ecosystem. These emerging companies rely heavily on capital investment to advance R&D and bring products to market and would be most impacted by reductions and changes in investment caused by reference pricing.

Seven Colorado congressional offices joined the discussion. You can view a recording of the presentation here.

CBSA continues to meet with our delegation to talk about why this approach would cripple our growing life sciences ecosystem and the patients we serve. Learn more about the impact in Colorado.

Who Develops Medicines? An Analysis of NIH Grants

There is a common, but misguided perception that NIH funding, not private investment, is largely responsible for the creation and approval of new therapies. This week, Vital Transformation released another study that tests that theory.

In the study, they identified patents linked to NIH grants from a single year, noting those associated with clinical trials and approved medicines. Then, they quantified the public and private investments made for those investigational and approved medicines.

Here are the findings:

  • 23,230 NIH grants in the year 2000 were linked – by NIH-supported patents – to 18 FDA-approved medicines by 2020.
  • None of these medicines reached approval without significant private investment.
    • In fact, total private investment for the 18 approved medicines exceeded NIH funding by orders of magnitude: $44.2 billion in private investment compared to $670 million in NIH funding.
  • As industry’s share of total investment increased, so did the likelihood of approval.

You can check out the full report here.

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