Incubate in Endpoints News on the Importance of the EPIC Act

Incubate executive director John Stanford was recently featured in an Endpoints News article by senior editor Zachary Brennan on legislation, including the EPIC Act, introduced ahead of the forthcoming reconciliation package.

The EPIC Act would undo a discrepancy in the Inflation Reduction Act that has shifted the investment away from small molecule therapies, despite their enormous scientific potential. In Endpoints, Stanford highlighted Incubate's long standing support for the bill:

"This is our priority one, two and three," John Stanford, executive director of Incubate, told Endpoints News in an interview...

Republicans' reconciliation package, which will likely only require a simple majority for passage, is "the train in the station, and we've been throwing in all of our efforts at that," Stanford said.

Both the House and Senate have passed separate versions of their legislative packages and now need to come together and find common ground.

Stanford stressed that until a fix is in, venture capital firms will continue to prioritize biologics for investment. And while biopharma companies initially backed a separation in exclusivity between biologics and small molecule drugs when the biosimilars pathway was created in 2010, and haven't so far deemed the negotiations as material to their bottom lines, Stanford said that this situation is different and is already affecting investments.

He said the government can now effectively cut off any exclusivity for small molecule drugs when negotiated prices take effect, whereas the biosimilars pathway didn't prevent small molecule drugs from enjoying years of exclusivity via their patents.