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July 24, 2025Can a polarized biomedical community reform drug development policies while maintaining nuance and moderation?
The recent NIH shutdown coincided almost perfectly with JPM Week, one of the biotech industry’s biggest events. While many at JPM predicted a shift from the “biotech winter” of recent years to a “biotech spring”, others remained deeply skeptical. As one participant bluntly put it, “An antivaxxer idiot and his gang are here to kill drug development.” (The choice to quote such strong language reflects the deep divisions within the industry.)
But before we react with dogmatic reflexes, let’s step back and examine the bigger picture.
Biotech is facing a paradox. Despite unprecedented technological advances—from single-cell transcriptomics to AI-driven drug discovery—the efficiency of drug development has plummeted. Costs have surged, while the number of truly novel therapies per researcher has declined.
CureLab Oncology founder and CEO Dr. Alexander Shneider is also quoted:
This cannot simply be attributed to the law of diminishing returns—the entire system of drug discovery has evolved in ways that demand scrutiny. The public—both in the U.S. and globally—pays the price, not just financially but in terms of delayed and unrealized medical breakthroughs.
Systemic reform is necessary. Institutions like the NIH, FDA, USPTO, and even Wall Street must be reassessed to eliminate outdated bureaucratic obstacles in government and inefficiencies in the private sector. The NIH, while vital to innovation, is not without flaws. A minor technical glitch in its grant registration system delayed our company’s application process by nearly a year—a costly inefficiency that is far from unique. Even more troubling, current research funding priorities do not always align with real-world medical needs.
Consider this: How many hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds are spent on hardly predictive studies using irrelevant animal models that yield little success for the future clinical studies and improvement in public health? At the same time, innovative researchers who refuse to conform to these models struggle to secure funding.
However, poorly executed reforms could be just as dangerous as the status quo. It would be easy to convince an uninformed public that funding studies on a particular frog species that lives on another continent is frivolous NIH spending. Yet, that same frog might hold a gene encoding a protein that could prevent a major human disease.
Efforts to freeze NIH funding in the name of reform pose a dilemma. On one hand, some NIH-funded projects are genuinely promising, and delaying them could stall lifesaving breakthroughs. On the other, preserving a broken system stifles the kind of disruptive innovation that has historically led to civilization’s greatest advancements.
Both reformists and defenders of the status quo believe they are acting in the best interests of public health. The reality is that lasting reform requires a serious, structured dialogue, where all perspectives are respected and critically examined.
But this dialogue won’t be easy—because NIH-funded academia has become one of the most powerful social and political forces. Reforming NIH would disrupt an entire ecosystem of researchers whose careers depend on current funding priorities—even when those priorities may not be the most productive for society.
Beyond NIH reform, another existential challenge looms over biotech: the partial obsolescence of current patent laws. Intellectual property (IP) protections form the foundation of the industry’s economic model, yet outdated USPTO regulations now hinder rather than encourage innovation. Without strong IP rights, investment in new therapies would collapse, casting a long shadow over the industry’s future.
To fix this, biotech leaders must engage directly with the USPTO, policymakers, and the public to modernize patent laws for today’s rapidly evolving scientific landscape.
The challenge ahead is clear: fundamental reforms and realignments are necessary and long overdue, but they must be deliberate, not reactionary.
Entrusting the analysis of biotech’s systemic failures to those who benefit most from the current system risks producing biased, self-serving conclusions—a kind of institutionalized self-preservation that prevents real progress.
Yet, blindly tearing down existing structures without thoughtful alternatives could be just as disastrous. Biomedical progress cannot afford a “cultural revolution” approach that values disruption for its own sake.
Instead, the industry must embrace systemic, institutional-level engagement that welcomes critical fact-checking, opposing perspectives, and a commitment to evidence-based reform. Unfortunately, achieving true reform will remain difficult unless all participants embrace the most critical aspect of diversity: diversity of thought. Lasting change requires not only acknowledging opposing views but actively engaging in an inclusive, fact-based discussion.
Because in the end, the real enemy isn’t NIH bureaucracy or radical reformists—it’s stagnation.
