Patent gaming and anti-competitive practices have been impacting drug innovation. Often, the federal government works to keep checks and balances on innovation practices – like the Biden era FTC crackdown on inhaler patent abuses. But, recent instability in the federal policy arena indicates that the government may not be a reliable regulatory partner. With this loss, however, philanthropy has the opportunity to step up and actively reshape the biotech innovation ecosystem – and they should. Michael Nguyen-Mason and I write about this in a recent piece with STAT First Opinion:
Since the dawn of biomedical research, philanthropy has played a pivotal role in defining the direction of biomedical innovation. The Rockefeller Foundation, for example, was a central institutional supporter of the collaboration between physicists and biologists leading to the birth of the field of microbiology in the 1920s.
Today there are many health-related foundations focused on innovating in health care, with particularly well-funded efforts being connected to cases where high-net worth individuals, or their loved ones, get afflicted with a rare disease. These foundations serve as an important model to subsidize private innovation efforts as well as increase the chances a drug is approved by the FDA.
Still, there is potential for foundations to more strongly bolster competition in the market for biotech — in both venture philanthropy and social justice philanthropy….
Read more on Stat First Opinion, here.
Research for this piece was supported by Arnold Ventures.
