As Election Day 2024 gets closer, STAT’s First Opinion asked executives from leading biotech and pharmaceutical companies to reflect on how their industry is being portrayed in the presidential campaign — and what their hopes are for a new presidential administration. You can also read Sandoz CEO Richard Saynor on what the 2024 conversation is missing and Bayer Pharmaceuticals COO Sebastian Guth on bad policy ideas.
More than 200 years ago, long before the complexities of modern pharmaceuticals came into play, George Washington used his first State of the Union address to call on Congress to establish a patent system for the advancement of society. America’s founders created a system that incentivized invention by granting inventors the right to profit from their invention to the exclusion of others for a limited period, known as the patent term. In exchange, inventors disclose to the world how to make and use their invention, which in turn stimulates the next generation of scientific and technological innovation. During the patent term, others could test, build, and improve upon the invention, and once the term ended, they also could profit from it. Washington signed the Patent Act of 1790 into law “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” and signed the first patent that year.
Likely more than in any other industry, patents are essential to incentivize R&D in biopharmaceuticals due to the extremely lengthy, costly, and risky nature of drug development. At Lilly, it took 35 years of research, dozens of failed clinical trials, and an investment of $10 billion to bring one of the first FDA-approved disease-modifying treatments to patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
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