By: Christopher P. Molineaux
President
Pennsylvania Bio
As we all know, our industry operates in a highly-regulated and cash-intense environment where it takes 12 to 15 years and between $800 million to $1.2 billion to bring a product to market.
For some companies, not getting that next infusion of cash could mean the end of years of research and the end of the hope for that potential treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, breast cancer, and countless other debilitating diseases.
Like many other industries, the bioscience industry has not been spared by the financial crisis and credit crunch. Some companies went out of business and many others hunkered down and tried to cut spending to weather the storm.
A Shot in the Arm
A part of the newly-enacted health care reform legislation, the Therapeutic Discovery Project Program will provide the shot in the arm that many of our companies need to keep going. This program will provide $1 billion for small bioscience companies (those with fewer than 250 employees) through a tax credit or grant to recoup expenses related to qualifying biomedical research.
This program is targeted to projects that show significant potential to produce new therapies, address unmet medical needs, reduce the long-term growth of health care costs, and advance the goal of curing cancer within the next 30 years.
The program is a huge win for our industry, allowing our small companies to apply for a tax credit or grant worth up to fifty percent of qualifying investments, or up to a maximum credit of $5 million per company.
Pennsylvania Bio thanks BIO for leading the effort to develop this provision and Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz (PA 13th Congressional District), who championed this effort in Congress.
Measuring the Impact
The potential impact of this program on Pennsylvania’s bioscience industry cannot be understated. The funding from this program could help our companies extend their cash flow enough to get their clinical candidate to that next stage of development, to focus on a secondary indication for a candidate, or even just to keep their lights on for a few more months.
With the application deadline of July 21st behind us, we now need to be able to measure the impact that this program could have on Pennsylvania. If your company applied, please notify Karla White, vice president of external affairs at karla@pennsylvaniabio.org.
It is important that we know how many Pennsylvania companies applied so we can demonstrate the importance of this program to Congress and encourage them to provide another round of funding for this program.
Of Pennsylvania Bio’s more than 390 members, fifty-six percent are what we define as “core members” or members that are directly involved in the bioscience industry. Of these core member companies, around 150 companies have 200 employees or less and fit the criteria to benefit from this program.
We already know that 27 member companies have applied, and of them 16 have requested a total of more than $63 million in funding, but we need to hear from you so that we can understand the total potential impact.
As always, Pennsylvania Bio is committed to working on your behalf to ensure that we have programs like this in place so that you can move your company forward and continue your life-saving research.
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