WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- A study shows that the U. S. government invested more than 100 billion U.S. dollars between 2010 and 2016 in the basic biomedical research that led to new medicines.
The new report from Bentley University, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that every one of the 210 new medicines approved over this six year period was associated with research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
NIH, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the nation's medical research agency.
The report says, as much as 64 billion dollars of this funding was associated with 84 innovative, first-in-class drugs, which treat disease through novel biological mechanisms or targets.
"This data underscores the critical impact of government funding for basic biomedical research on the drug discovery and development process," says Dr. Fred Ledley, Director of the Center for Integration of Science and Industry of the Bentley University and the senior author on this study.
It shows that more than 90 percent of this funding is directly associated with research on the biological targets for drug action, rather than the drugs themselves.
The discovery of novel biological mechanisms and targets through basic research is an enabling step leading to the discovery and development of new medicines for untreatable diseases.
The U.S. President Donald Trump asked last March to cut spending on NIH but was rejected by the Congress later.
