With so much of the active pharmaceutical ingredient supply chain overseas, BIO President and CEO John F. Crowley explains why building America’s biomanufacturing sector is vital for national security.
The news: A recently released Defense Department report “identified that 54% of the DoD pharmaceutical supply chain is considered either high or very high risk, with dependency on non-Trade Agreements Act (TAA) compliant suppliers, sourcing from China and India, or unknown.” (H/T Axios)
Why it matters: “We’ve seen the consequences of having critical manufacturing sectors, especially those as crucial as medicines, located offshore,” said John F. Crowley in an interview with Bio.News, recounting supply chain problems during COVID-19. “But next time, we may not be as fortunate, so we have to be prepared.”
“Biotechnology is a national security imperative,” said Crowley. Boosting domestic biomanufacturing—from assays and testing equipment to active pharmaceutical ingredients to branded and generic medicines—is vital “to ensure that people living in the United States have a continuous supply of the medicines.”
The first step: audit the current state of biomanufacturing to understand the breadth of the challenge, he explained.
The bottom line: “If we’re not careful and thoughtful, and we don’t approach this with a great sense of urgency and lean into this challenge aggressively, we’re going to look back and realize that we’ve lost the ability to make medicines, and for patients in the United States to have access to medicines,” he said. “Let’s make sure we have the capabilities and an arsenal of technologies to respond to what could be an existential threat.”
Read more at Bio.News.
Want to know more about John Crowley? He recently joined the podcast “In Sickness: Men and the Culture of Caregiving” to discuss his journey to becoming a biotech CEO and his focus on patients in his new role at BIO. Click here to listen.
