America Keeps Its Biotech Lead by Building It

In STAT, ABI senior advisors Gary Locke and Patrick McHenry lay out an agenda grounded in domestic and allied strength.

You cannot protect American leadership in biotechnology simply by restricting the competition. Trade walls don't synthesize medicines, build manufacturing plants, or discover cures. That is the case Gary Locke, former Washington Governor, Commerce Secretary, and Ambassador to China, and Patrick McHenry, former Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, make in STAT today. Both serve as senior advisors to the American Biosecurity Initiative.

The competition they describe is measurable. America still produces first-in-class medicines at seven times China's rate, yet Beijing's new five-year plan aims to claim a quarter of the world's first-in-class drugs by 2030. Chinese-designed medicines grew from less than seven percent of drugs in development globally a decade ago to almost 30 percent by 2025, and Chinese labs manufacture about a fifth of the active ingredients in medicines the FDA considers essential.

Both authors have worked on export controls, which lends weight to their warning about broad restrictions. Locke worked to reform the export control system as commerce secretary and later as ambassador, and McHenry helped craft controls on surveillance technology during two decades in Congress. Their experience taught them that narrow controls protect sensitive technology, while sweeping restrictions can disrupt medicine supply before replacement capacity exists and push competitors to build what they once bought from America.

Their alternative has four parts. America should expand domestic and allied capacity for the most critical medicines and ingredients, backed by strategic reserves. It should coordinate manufacturing, research, and clinical development with partners such as Japan, South Korea, Europe, and India. It should make it easier for companies to invest in next-generation manufacturing. Most importantly, it should sustain the research system that built American leadership: predictable funding for basic science, a highly trained workforce, and a welcome for the world's best scientists.

China has published its plan for biotech leadership. America needs a strategy that takes its own ambitions just as seriously.

Read the full op-ed in STAT.