Good Day BIO: Biodefense, COVID IP waiver concerns, and World CRISPR Day

A busy week for the bioeconomy in D.C., with President Biden launching the National Biodefense Strategy and bipartisan U.S. Senators expressing serious concerns about the expansion of the WTO’s COVID-19 IP waiver. Also, it’s World CRISPR Day—we look at recent developments. (856 words, 4 minutes, 16 seconds)

Bipartisan Senators express concern about COVID IP waiver

A bipartisan group of senior U.S. Senators is raising serious concerns about the proposed expansion of the IP waiver for COVID-19 technology—an important bipartisan statement echoing what BIO’s been saying all along.

The news: U.S. Sens. Tom Carper (D-DE) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) led a group of eight bipartisan U.S. Senators in a letter to U.S. Trade Rep. Katherine Tai seeking more information about the proposed expansion of the World Trade Organization (WTO) IP waiver and urging the administration to “safeguard American innovation.”

Catch up: In June, the WTO agreed to waive IP protections for COVID-19 vaccines. Now, the WTO is considering expanding the waiver to cover COVID-19 therapeutics and diagnostics.

“The United States is a global leader in research and development (R&D) and innovation in part because of our strong protections for IP,”says the letter. “American companies are committed to numerous cooperative agreements to increase global access to therapeutics and diagnostics in addition to vaccines. In fact, many countries that initially proposed this waiver are producing their own products and have not indicated that domestic demand exceeds their own supplies.”

“Biotech has been voluntarily doing what it can to make COVID-19 technology available,”Bio.News reported last month—from not enforcing patents at the worst of the pandemic to establishing licensing agreements, manufacturing partnerships, and subsidiaries worldwide.

The next steps: The Senators request answers to several questions, including whether USTR or the WTO has performed economic analysis, how the WTO will define “diagnostic” and “therapeutic,” and if USTR is consulting transparently with Congress.  

BIO’s take: “Waiving all IP rights to a broad range of cutting-edge products would undermine U.S. competitiveness and be a dangerous blow to our most innovative companies,” says David Lachmann, BIO’s Senior Director of Federal Government Relations.

Biden’s National Biodefense Strategy includes role for biotech

On Tuesday, President Biden signed a national security memorandum focused on biological threats and pandemic preparedness, and launched a national biodefense strategy—Bio.News got the details from Joel Straus, BIO’s Manager of Healthcare and Infectious Disease Policy.

The documents:

• National Security Memorandum-15 (NSM-15) outlines relevant policy and describes actions needed by U.S. government agencies to manage the “risk of biological incidents.”
• The National Biodefense Strategy and Implementation Plan for Countering Biological Threats, Enhancing Pandemic Preparedness, and Achieving Global Health Security outlines five preparedness goals, including risk awareness and detection, ensuring biodefense enterprise capabilities and preparedness, rapid response, and recovery.

Notably for biotech, the strategy calls for achieving the ability to:

• develop a test to detect a pathogen within 12 hours;
• produce novel therapeutics within six months; and
• produce enough vaccines to protect the nation within 130 days.

But more funding is needed: “The Administration is already implementing key actions in the Strategy with existing funding,” says the White House. “However, fully achieving these transformative objectives will require the support of Congress to provide additional resources, including the President’s $88 billion request over five years for pandemic preparedness and biodefense.”

BIO’s take: BIO strongly supports the $88 billion request and the plan’s ambitious goals. Now, BIO calls on Congress to act to ensure the next pandemic doesn’t stand a chance.

Read more in Bio.News.

World CRISPR Day

Since its deployment about a decade ago fast-forwarded the field of gene editing, we see new advances in CRISPR’s potential practically every day. Today, we celebrate the third World CRISPR Day with a look at some recent developments.

But first—what’s CRISPR? “It’s a precision tool,” said Nobel Laureate and CRISPR pioneer Dr. Jennifer Doudna during the 2020 BIO Digital. “It speeds up the pace” of gene editing by allowing researchers to make small, precise edits to the genome and gives us a “tool for understanding the genes.” 

Read: Gene Editing 101 

CRISPR is critical to addressing the impact of climate change on food security. With CRISPR, we can speed up the crossbreeding of plants and animals, leading to developments like:

• Wheat resistant to drought—something that's only going to get worse with climate change.
• Soybeans with ultra-high protein content and tomatoes with high vitamin D content, which can address nutrition and food scarcity worldwide.
• Poultry resistant to deadly bird flu, which is currently seeing some of the worst outbreaks in recent history, and better detection of hidden salmonella to protect animals and humans. 

CRISPR could also “treat or frankly even cure some of the most challenging diseases we face,” Dr. Doudna said—including lung and pancreatic cancer, hereditary high cholesterol, and sickle cell disease. 

Today is World CRISPR Day. Synthego, makers of gene editing platforms, will hold an all-day online event showcasing the latest discoveries and technologies—join here.

President Biden’s Thursday: Heading to Pittsburgh, PA, where he will give remarks on infrastructure at 2:15 PM ET. Then, he’ll travel to Philadelphia for a reception for Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. 

What’s Happening on Capitol Hill: Recess.