NEWARK — A new report from a U.S. congressional commission calls for $15 billion in federal spending in the next five years to ensure that the nation wins in biotech breakthroughs over China, and the University of Delaware’s STAR Campus hopes to see part of that proposed investment.
The report, issued by the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB), calls for swift action to head off Chinese investment in biotechnology before that is turned into an economic force too big to counter. It also calls for government funding to fuel research that could lead to the next scientific breakthroughs, as well as training for the next generation of scientists. The hope is that the proposed $15 billion from federal sources would unleash private dollars as well.
No place may be better poised to capitalize on these goals than the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL) Center at UD’s STAR Campus.
“You’ve got literally hundreds of cutting-edge American companies that take advantage of the opportunities here,” U.S. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said Tuesday at a press conference at the Ammon Pinizzotto Biopharmaceutical Innovation Center in Newark.
Coons and U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) welcomed commission members to unveil the report at the STAR campus and to showcase NIIMBL’s unique place in biotech manufacturing. The public-private partnership, which is funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology along with dues from 180 member organizations, focuses on supporting more efficient manufacturing as well as educating the manufacturing workforce.
The NSCEB report found that China has spent two decades rapidly working to scale up its biotech ecosystem in anticipation of dominating the supply chain and artificial intelligence has only shortened the window for drug-related discoveries. Furthermore, about 79% U.S. pharmaceutical companies depend on Chinese companies for some component of their manufacturing.
“The next global competition won’t just be about chips and satellites; it will be about proteins and DNA. Biotechnology is no longer a field of discovery, it’s a bridge to the future,” McBride said. “If we fail to act and fall behind, we may never catch up.”
The NSCEB report itself called NIIMBL a prime example of where federal investment in biotech research has paid off, particularly with workforce development, also noting that such programs have limited reach and capacity.
Coons said that may change soon as UD recently broke ground on a manufacturing plant next door. Called the Securing American Bio-Manufacturing Research and Education (SABRE), it would also function as a research and development lab to assist in scaling production for drugs for clinical trials and more.
SABRE is a Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) facility that would be instrumental in helping the U.S. train its future biotech workforce and has been the beneficiary of practice of congressionally directed spending, which has now ended.
“One of the challenges that we realized a few years ago was that we aren’t delivering the workforce training component that is badly needed, and with some dedicated funding secured, we’re making real progress in delivering that,” Coons said.
It remains to be seen whether the federal funding will come to fruition to realize this ambitious goal the bipartisan commission, which also includes industry, academics and leaders.
Weeks ago, the United States House of Representatives approved a budget framework that commits to extending the 2017 tax breaks for another decade and add another $5.5 trillion to the deficit, despite promises to find $1.5 trillion in cuts.
Both NIIMBL and SABRE were cut from a continuing budget resolution passed by Congress in March.
Coons started the year by telling the Delaware Business Times that he felt the best strategy for the state was to focus on prospective U.S. Department of Defense spending in the Trump era. He holds to that belief, as the NSCEB report warns of a reality where China can effectively cripple the U.S. by withholding critical materials.
“The Republican budget adds another $150 billion at least to defense spending, and the point of this report is to look at the defense and national security implications of biosecurity,” he told DBT.
“The reality is, they’re going to balloon the deficit, but the one thing they won’t cut is defense – and this report specifically calls out the need for a cGMP facility that would happen here through the [Defense Department],” he said.
UD President Dennis Assanis told DBT that the work done at NIIMBL was already critical to national security, boosting his hopes that the federal funding could happen at the STAR Campus again.
“It’s a bipartisan thing, it’s the common good to want to see the competitiveness of the U.S. in the field of biological science. It’s critical for the 21st century. I don’t see how we can’t do it, given everything else that other nations are doing without continuing to invest,” he said.
