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As biotech celebrates its 50th year, we are locked in “the fight of our lives” to ensure patients get more of the medical innovations they need and America remains a leader in biotech, BIO President & CEO John F. Crowley told an Axios event.
The official launch of the “Fight of Our Lives” campaign by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), hosted by Axios in Washington DC on April 16, featured discussions with Crowley, along with a patient advocate, a biotech CEO, and a congresswoman championing biotech.
The “Fight of Our Lives” campaign uses human stories to hail 50 years of biotechnology breakthroughs—while providing a reminder that this momentum cannot be taken for granted.
“Today, the U.S. biotechnology industry stands at a crossroads,” according to Crowley. “The ‘Fight of Our Lives’ recognizes what our industry has already delivered, and what is possible over the next 50 years with smart policies, sustained investment, and continued American leadership.”
A revolution facing headwinds
“We are in the midst of the most exciting revolution in science and medicine in human history,” Crowley told the Axios event, noting advances in neuroscience, genetic medicine, rare diseases, cancer, and many other areas.
But there are forces slowing this progress, he warned.
“We’re running up against headwinds that are almost entirely man-made,” Crowley said. “The good news is, if they’re man-made problems, we can come up with man-made and woman-made solutions.”
Headwinds include ineffective policy moves, like “the heavy hand of tariffs,” and efforts aimed at affordability that do not achieve their goals. The real solution, Crowley said, is to address inefficiencies within the system.
“The United States is the only country where more than half of the price of medicines don’t go to the inventors, don’t go to the innovators. It gets lost in the system of middlemen,” he said. “So let’s tackle that.”
By simplifying the system, and addressing costs and barriers to access caused by pharmacy benefit managers and insurers, we can reduce out-of-pocket costs and increase patient access while encouraging biotech innovation and growth, Crowley said. This is especially important, he added, given China’s efforts to replace the U.S. as the world leader in biotechnology, which would hurt our economy and security.
“We have the lead. We need to maintain and advance that lead, because at the end of the day, we care about biotechnology for our ability to make newer and better medicines, as an engine of economic growth, and for our national security,” Crowley said. “Biotech dominance is national security.”
Concerns about China were raised in another discussion at the event, with Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), who has sponsored legislation to support biotech research. She said we must focus on supporting biotech rather than engaging in distractions. China is committed to biotech, “while the U.S. is having these really unnecessary debates about science,” Rep. DeGette warned.
Noubar Afeyan, cofounder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering and a Moderna cofounder and board member, also spoke of distractions from those who would discredit science.
“In the 39 years I’ve been involved in this industry, and starting companies, the scientific progress and technology is really beyond comparison,” he said, “and yet, the underlying science has been massively questioned by policymakers.” Afeyan worried that “the notion that science advances based on debate, based on facts, has been under unprecedented attack. I’ve not seen anything like it in my whole career.”
With urgent action, Crowley said, we can still win the fight to ensure America leads the way in biotech innovation.
“We are 50 years in, celebrating the founding of our very first biotechnology company, Genentech, in April of 1976,” he said. “Now we have to think about what the next 50 years look like.”
‘Fight of Our Lives’ campaign
Before Crowley spoke, there was a showing of a video that encapsulates BIO’s “Fight of Our Lives” campaign. The video “humanizes who we are, what we do, why we do it, and for whom we do it,” Crowley said. He stressed that more videos and messaging would be forthcoming during the campaign.
The “Fight of Our Lives” campaign puts a focus on the urgency of supporting biotech, through the real stories of the patients, families, caregivers, researchers, and entrepreneurs who fight every day to find answers to our health challenges.
It elevates the people behind the progress and reinforces what it will take to sustain innovation, strengthen economic leadership, and deliver the next generation of breakthroughs.
The website includes stories of some determined patients and provides the opportunity for other patients to share their own journeys.
It also has an interactive timeline of highlights from the first 50 years of biotech, to remind us why the next 50 years matter.
Visit the Fight of Our Lives website.
Alex Missen contributed to this report.
