Biotechnology Hearing Highlights the Future

By: Ellen Kuo
Thursday, November 13, 2025
Senate Health, Education, Labor, Pensions Committee Holds Hearing on the Future of Biotech

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Bill Cassidy held a noteworthy hearing on October 29, highlighting the future of biotech and the importance of keeping the United States’ edge in this area of science. The hearing explored actions such as reducing regulatory uncertainty, creating new frameworks that will focus on keeping developers from going overseas to countries such as China, ensuring Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gold standard review is maintained, leveraging AI and machine learning, and building on new technology platforms such as mRNA to accelerate drug discovery and clinical development. 

Ranking Member Bernie Sanders took the opportunity in his opening statement to reiterate the current situation with the administration trying to throw 15 million people off of the health care they have and doubling premiums for more than 20 million Americans by not extending the health care tax credits under the Affordable Care Act. He was also critical of the high costs of drugs, where the median price of a new drug has more than doubled over the past four years. Witness Reshma Ramachandran from the Yale School of Medicine bolstered Sander’s position on the high costs of life saving cures. Additionally, Sanders also praised the work of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the need to continue supporting the agency. He noted that over $100 million in NIH grants contributed to the development of CAR-T for lymphoma and, NIH funded viral vector technology created new treatments for sickle cell disease.

Senator Patty Murray spoke forcefully in support of NIH. She detailed the thousands of scientists and grant administrators laid off at NIH and the cancellation of 5,000 grants earlier this year, decreasing American competitiveness in biomedical research. Without NIH investments, the country will not see new treatments, and the biotech industry does not have the funds to make up for shortfalls in NIH funding, according to Ramachandran.

The witnesses addressed a wide range of issues. For example, the FDA must evolve as technology evolves by first facilitating more use of advanced evidence generation techniques. Second, the FDA can do more to support the development of treatments for rare diseases. Third, the FDA can promote scalability by streamlining review in the drugs and biologics centers.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, which is an advocacy organization representing biotech companies and industry leaders, said that biotech is an American led industry. He said that NIH plays an important foundational role in research and facilitates translation for the entire industry. He also told the committee that the biotech industry has hundreds of experimental medicines and clinical studies and thousands more in earlier stages of research that promise to extend human life. The industry drives $3 trillion in economic output and employs 2.3 million Americans while supporting 8 million other jobs across all 50 states. America’s dominance in this field is critical to our national security. He recommended that small and midsize biotech be given the support they need to build domestic capacity with tax incentives, capital support, supply chain investment, workforce development, and streamlined infrastructure permitting. He also wanted to see a reauthorization of the Rare Pediatric Disease Priority Review Program, which helps lead to more therapies with no costs to the taxpayers.

Witness Joshua Mokower from Stanford University School of Medicine, who also focused on the challenge of key staff turnover and the lack of transparency at the FDA. He said a majority of biotech innovators have indicated that the typical time for a new cell or gene therapy to advance through the FDA is six to ten years, which is a problem. Read all witness testimony here.