One in four new drugs approved in the US between January 2008 and December 2017 received direct funding from public resources for late stage research or through spin-off companies created from public research institutions, a study published in the BMJ on Wednesday found.  As the drug pricing debate has accelerated in recent months, the debate over whether public or private entities do the majority of drug development work has continued, with the general assumption tha...

An argument has been brewing on Capitol Hill and elsewhere that boils down to the theory that US taxpayers are fronting billions of dollars’ worth of public research that translates into early-stage products that are later sold to companies, go on to win FDA approval and then reap millions or billions in sales, although the government never sees a dime of those earnings. With the help of a new Congressional Research Service (CRS) report published Friday and some other m...

A group of 51 lawmakers are calling on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to issue guidance on when "march-in rights" could be used to bypass patents on drugs developed using federal funding. In a letter led by Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell and NIH Director Francis Collins today, the lawmakers call on NIH to "utilize [its] existing statutory authority to respond to the soaring cost of pharmaceutic...