Projo Biz Blog

The Rhode Island BioGroup and the New England Biotech Association are campaigning to protect Rhode Island's biotech industry through federal legislation that would provide extended protection for the intellectual property of biotech innovators.

Companies with a prescence in the state such as Amgen, Neurotech, and Alexion that develop new drugs to treat diseases like cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer's would benefit, the trade group said.

Federal health care reform being debated in Congress will govern how companies can access proprietary data from biotech manufacturers to make copy-cat medicines, also known as biosimilars. The biosimilars medicines can be sold at lower costs than the original medicines because biosimilars manufacturers do not have to recoup the massive cost of research.

Rhode Island's biotech leaders support allowing biosimilars drug makers to access proprietary data that would help them replicate biologic medicine but only after a 12-year period. The 12-year period is considered the shortest acceptable time frame for biotech companies to recoup the estimated $1.5 billion investment required to bring a new biologic drug to market.

Kathie Shields, Executive Director of the Rhode Island BioGroup, called the 12-year period a critical threshold needed to continue building the Rhode Island biotech industry.

"Rhode Island employs nearly 5,000 bioscience professionals representing the spectrum of start-ups to major biopharmaceutical manufacturers," said Shields. "This biodiversity is critical to our state, as is the 12 year-data protection period that would universally support them."

 Tags  New England Biotech Association Rhode Island BioGroup

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