Incubate Op-Ed in BioSpace: Washington's Policy Shifts Are Driving Capital Away From Life-Saving Research

In his latest opinion piece for BioSpace, Incubate executive director John Stanford details how recent federal policy shifts are threatening the innovation pipeline for new medicines.

Drawing on findings from Incubate's recent survey of early-stage biotech companies, Stanford reveals biotech CEOs' chief policy concerns. Most notably, the Inflation Reduction Act's so-called "pill-penalty" has undermined investments into small molecule therapies, while recent Most Favored Nation drug pricing proposals would make it harder for American biotechs to develop and launch new medicines. Cuts to the FDA and NIH, as well as looming tariffs on pharmaceutical products, further threaten to stall progress in the life sciences.

BioSpace:

When the people building companies and the people funding them are waving the same red flag, policymakers should take note. This is a policy environment that discourages risk-taking at precisely the moment we need it most. Startups are being forced to make hard choices: shelve promising programs, pull back on trials or pivot away from entire classes of cutting-edge and potentially life-saving drugs.

What's needed now is a course correction. Congress and the Trump administration can start by passing the EPIC Act to grant small-molecule drugs the full thirteen-year protection period from price controls. They should also stabilize operations at the NIH and FDA, giving companies a predictable regulatory path forward. Finally, they should strengthen U.S. intellectual property protections while resisting price control policies that make our market less attractive.

As the survey results show, markets react quickly to policy shifts. If Washington doesn't act, capital will continue to move elsewhere -- and once it's gone, the research it supports disappears with it.

There's still time to fix this. But the window is closing.