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Drug prices, the approval process, and manufacturing jobs were focus of meeting In a meeting with pharmaceutical executives last week, President Donald J. Trump said his Administration will speed up drug approvals and significantly cut regulations. The sit-down included the head of the main drug industry trade group, Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America
President Trump meeting last week with drug industry executives. (PhRMA), and executives from Amgen, Celgene, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly & Co., Merck & Co., and Novartis. Much of the public portion of the event focused on the time it takes to get a new drug onto the market. Trump spoke about a theoretical terminal patient being denied access to experi-
mental drugs. “They say the patient within four weeks will be dead, and they say, ‘Well, we still can’t approve the drug,’ ” Trump told the pharma executives. “We don’t know whether the drug works or doesn’t work, but we can’t approve the drug because we don’t want to hurt the patient.” He proposed streamlining the process “so that if it works, you can actually get it approved instead of waiting for many, many years.” However, the notion that drugs should be approved without sufficient data has some industry experts concerned about the impact on patients. “The reason that drugs can take years to be evaluated is because we are gaining evidence on their efficacy and safety,” says Aaron Kesselheim, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. “Without that evidence, we wouldn’t know how to use these drugs.” In his public comments at the meeting, Trump also focused on the high cost of medicines and the need to increase drug industry jobs domestically. “We have to get lower prices, we have to get even better innovation … and I want you to manufacture in the U.S.,” he told the executives. PhRMA CEO Steve Ubl released a statement noting that trade, tax, regulatory, and job creation policies were discussed in the private portion of the meeting. “We believe if these policies are enacted, it will translate to up to 350,000 new jobs over the next 10 years,” he said.—LISA JARVIS
BY THE NUMBERS
$719 million Amount invested in agricultural biotechnology start-ups in 2016 by venture capitalists and corporations in 84 deals, according to data compiled by AgFunder. The start-ups include firms developing crop inputs and farm technologies such as genetics, microbial solutions, and breeding. Microbial crop input firm Indigo led the pack by raising $156 million in two rounds of funding.
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | FEBRUARY 6, 2017
A federal jury has ordered technology and catalyst firm Materia to pay Evonik Industries royalties of more than $1.5 million in a dispute over the validity of a key patent covering ruthenium-based olefin metathesis catalysts used to make plastics and specialty oleochemicals. However, the jury also decided that Materia had not willfully or maliciously violated Evonik’s patent. It did not assess punitive damages. The Delaware jury’s decision may end a seven-year-old dispute covering academic patents licensed to Materia based on discoveries by Robert H. Grubbs of Caltech and other scientists. Grubbs, along with Yves Chauvin and Richard R. Schrock, shared the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their role in the discovery of olefin metathesis. According to Evonik, an earlier ruling by the judge hearing the case denied the validity of Materia’s opposing patent. “A significant number of Materia’s metathesis catalysts and some products they make with them are now covered by our patent,” an Evonik spokesman says. “They will need to take a license and pay royalties in the future.” But Materia says the dispute isn’t over. “There are issues remaining that could reverse the decision,” says J.J. Dupré, the firm’s legal affairs director. Materia’s patents, he says, remain in force, and the legal tussle will have little effect on the firm’s ability to service clients’ catalyst needs. C&EN was unable to talk with Grubbs by press time, but the chemist earlier said the dispute is not so much about science as it is about a large company oppressing a smaller one. The science “had been presented in the open literature and settled,” he said.—MARC REISCH
CREDIT: RON SACHS/SIPA/NEWSCOM
Materia loses Trump sits down with metathesis pharmaceutical executives patent case
