A Maryland-based biotech firm may have just cured HIV. That company recently submitted an FDA application for AGT103-T, an HIV therapy that could eliminate the virus in a single dose. If the agency approves the drug, clinical trials could begin as soon as January.
The news is a good reminder of how drug innovation can address the biggest public health crises of our time. Although medical progress benefits all patients, such breakthroughs are especially valuable to underserved communities. To keep this progress going, lawmakers can consider policies that encourage investments in breakthrough biomedical research and science education.
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Many of the most serious health challenges our nation faces disproportionately affect minority and low-income people. Consider that rates of HIV/AIDS are higher among African Americans, Latinos, and economically disadvantaged populations than they are in the population as a whole.
For this reason, recent progress toward treating and potentially curing the illness has been beneficial for these communities. And that progress has been nothing short of astounding. Back in 1995, more people aged 25 to 44 died from HIV/AIDS than from any other cause. Since then, antiretroviral drugs have become so effective at managing the illness that a 20-year-old diagnosed with HIV today can expect to live nearly as long as someone who isn’t infected.
If drugs such as AGT103-T prove effective, then in just a few years’ time, HIV could become a thing of the past, much to the benefit of minority communities and other disadvantaged groups. Something similar can be said about treatments for hepatitis C — again, a disease that disproportionately affects African Americans. Just a few years ago, the best treatments for this disease had serious side effects and achieved cure rates of slightly more than 40%. The latest hepatitis C therapies can eliminate the most common form of the disease in more than 90% of patients over the course of just eight weeks, with minimal side effects.
African Americans have particularly benefited from this breakthrough. Cure rates for this group increased nearly 10% during clinical trials for the first oral, direct-acting, antiviral hepatitis C treatment. And deaths from hepatitis C dropped for African Americans from 2013 to 2017.
In the years ahead, drug innovation will remain crucial for the health of underserved populations. Take diabetes. The condition is more than twice as prevalent among Hispanic Americans as it is among non-Hispanic whites. Hispanics are also more prone to severe complications from the disease such as kidney failure and blindness.
What this means is that newer, more powerful treatments will benefit Hispanic Americans more than others. So, it’s encouraging that drug companies are currently developing 160 different medicines for treating diabetes and related conditions.
Drug firms are also working on new treatments for a host of other health conditions that disproportionately affect minority and low-income populations, conditions including heart disease, cancer, and addiction.
But continued progress in these areas is hardly guaranteed, as drug development remains a costly and risky process. Creating just one new treatment or cure costs an average of $2.6 billion over the course of a decade or more.
These projects are made worthwhile for investors by America’s patent system, which protects researchers’ hard-won discoveries from theft by competitors. Patents also give drug companies a period of market exclusivity during which they have a chance to earn back their initial investments. That system has helped make the United States into the world’s leading drug innovator. Last year alone, the pharmaceutical sector invested nearly $80 billion in new research — more than any year on record.
Unfortunately, leaders in Congress are considering several policies that would disrupt this research environment, depriving disadvantaged communities of potentially revolutionary new medicines. For instance, some lawmakers want to weaken patents and other intellectual property protections for drug firms. Other proposals would impose price controls on prescription drugs sold to the government.
Such policies would add significant uncertainty to the drug development process, causing investments into new research to dry up quickly.
Another issue that could have a significant negative impact on continued research and development is America’s failure to educate workers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), a failure that also poses a threat to medical progress. In the last 15 years, a mere 10% of American students earned bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering. This lack of homegrown talent will make it far harder for American drug firms to continue to out-innovate competitors around the world in the coming years.
Combined with more aggressive investments in STEM education, supporting strong intellectual property laws will help ensure that our nation’s life sciences sector can continue to deliver pathbreaking discoveries. My organization, ALLvanza, is committed to helping inspire, support, and guide members of underserved communities to get into STEM education programs and pursue careers within STEM fields.
We need reforms that safeguard the innovation ecosystem that has enabled medical science to thrive in the U.S. for decades. By fostering drug innovation, policymakers can advance medical science while also helping tackle the health challenges that have disproportionately affected America’s underserved communities for too long.
Rosa Mendoza is President and CEO of ALLvanza.
