Study: Planned budget cuts would hurt drug development badly
It turns out that almost 60% of patents cite research funded by NIH. And here, risky subsidies have made a very good performance, with just over half of the patents citing at least one risk subsidy. Note that many subsidies will have quotes from the two categories; To have better meaning, the researchers looked for patents where at least a quarter of the articles cited were born from the research funded by the NIH. For any subsidy, this number was somewhat greater than 35%; For risk subsidies, it was around 12%.
By examining specific examples, researchers have found that some of the approved drugs that were based on risky research was used for cancer treatments and genetic disorders. In other words, treatments that probably have a significant impact on public health. There are some reasons to think that this is also an underestimation of the impact. To begin with, their source data on financing priorities stopped in 2007, leaving a gap of around 15 years when financing for research cannot be analyzed, but patents are still being deposed.
In addition, drugs are just a small part of the potential impact of NIH research. “We have excluded a wide range of important medical advances which can also rely on research funded by NIH,” recognize researchers. “These include vaccines, genetic and cell therapies and other biological drugs; diagnostic technologies and medical devices; as well as innovations in medical procedures, patient care practices and surgical techniques.” Beyond the obvious implications for public health, these types of patents can lead to many economic activities, including the launch of entirely new businesses.
Beyond the information of current debates on scientific financing, research makes a greater point on scientific progress. We tend to focus on the main jumps forward and high -level scientists who lead them, as the Nobel Prize winners to come. But the reality is that most advances, especially in biology, are built on a large intellectual basis of lower profile work which may require years so that someone finds a way to apply it to everything that is patentable. Large cuts like these can mean that scientific superstars will always leave with subsidies, while leaving a devastated field by being part of this foundation.
Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1126 / Science.Aeb1564 (About DOI).
