According to a study released today, federally funded research contributed to the science underlying all new medicines approved by the U.S. FDA between 2010 and 2016.
The new report from Bentley University, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that the United States government invested more than $100 billion in the basic research that led to new medicines approved by the FDA between 2010 and 2016. Every one of the 210 new medicines approved over this six-year period was associated with research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). As much as $64 billion of this funding was associated with 84 innovative, first-in-class drugs, which treat disease through novel biological mechanisms or targets.
"While basic research can sometimes seem esoteric, our analysis shows that a substantial fraction of NIH funded, basic research can be directly linked to the medicines first approved in this decade." said Fred Ledley, director of the Center for Integration of Science and Industry, and the senior author on this study. "This data underscores the critical impact of government funding for basic biomedical research on the drug discovery and development process. Any reduction in this funding would inevitably slow the pipeline of new treatments for diseases that the public so desperately needs."
The Bentley study involved analysis of more than 2 million published research reports that were directly related to the 210 new medicines approved from 2010-2016 or to their biological targets. Of these, 600,000 published reports were identified as the work product of NIH-funded research projects. These projects involved more than 200,000 fiscal years of research funding and more than $100 billion in total cost. More than 90% of this funding was directly associated with research on the biological targets for drug action, rather than the drugs themselves, and represents basic biomedical research.
Image: Based in Bethesda, Maryland, the NIH is a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and is the nation’s medical research agency. Image courtesy of www.nih.gov.