House Hearing Explores the Future of Biotech

By: Ellen Kuo
Thursday, June 26, 2025
Jay Obernolte, Chair of the Research and Technology Subcommittee, and Randy Weber, Chair of the Energy Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, held a hearing on the future of biotechnology. Biotechnology is reshaping nearly every aspect of American life and is the next frontier, from AI-driven drug discovery and precision agriculture to synthetic biology and advanced bio-manufacturing. It is a strategic capability that underpins our economic strength, public health, food security, and national security, according to the full committee Chair, Brian Babin. He emphasized that it is time to launch a new golden age of innovation in biotechnology, rooted in American values, driven by public-private partnerships, and focused on solving the challenges of tomorrow. 

Representative Zoe Lofgren’s opening statement focused on the administration being on the warpath against U.S. science with abrupt funding cancellations to ongoing research and STEM workforce development programs including reduced graduate student admissions within STEM departments for the coming year. This is creating a brain drain of top U.S. talent to other nations and a chill across the entire enterprise, leaving young students asking, "Why bother to pursue science?" She said we are holding this hearing, "Embracing the Future of US Biotechnology -- Biotechnology Leadership," but there's not going to be a big future if the president's attacks on science aren't stopped.

One of the witnesses, Drew Endy, PhD, from Stanford University, testified that biology is nature's ultimate innovator. Utilizing the leaf as an example, he said it was a self-assembling solar panel that recycles itself. He testified that anything we can encode in DNA, we can grow when and where we need to, showing how biotechnology has evolved. First, there was the domestication and breeding of plants and animals for farming and food. Second was the use of genetic engineering, now half a century old. Third is synthetic biology, which lets us put biology together in powerful new ways, starting with DNA. He noted that these three waves of biotechnology are amazing, but in the context of innovation, they're overlapping and synergizing.