American leadership in biotechnology is a vital national security asset, the latest I am BIO podcast explains.
Why it matters: “America’s pharmaceutical industrial base is synonymous with the entire defense industrial base, and from a preparedness standpoint stands on equal footing with semiconductors, chemical production, and other critical materials,” Vic Suarez, founder and principal partner of Blu Zone Bio, tells the podcast.
How do we make it happen? By making sure we have a dependable supply chain during times of natural disaster, pandemic, or geopolitical turmoil is essential, says Suarez, a former Army Colonel who worked with Operation Warp Speed.
“BIO did a service to all of us, to really survey its members, and assess what is the degree of dependency? How many medicines in the pipeline? How many medicines in the market?” says MITRE’s Executive Director for Global Health Security and Biotechnology, Dr. Monique Mansoura. “Will it cost more to have a more resilient industrial base and supply chain? If so, how much, and are we willing to pay?”
“Biotechnologists will have a ChatGPT moment,” enabling DNA programming to unlock remarkable innovation, and it’s important the U.S. does that before our competitors, adds Ginkgo Bioworks CEO Jason Kelly.
The bottom line: “As we develop the technology that allows us to design and program biology to do new things, it is going to be far more impactful than electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and chemical engineering,” Kelly says. “We need to make sure we do it with care, and we need to do it with U.S. and democratic values.”
Listen to the episode at bio.org/podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
