How many new medicines rely on government funding? The short answer: all of them.

Research on the topic at Bentley, by the Center for Integration of Science and Industry, brought government and biotechnology industry leaders to campus in April. Participants such as U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark (pictured above) explored the essential role of public funding for basic biomedical science and how the science helps create medicines, jobs and successful companies.

The Bentley center’s study shows that, in the past decade, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) invested more than $100 billion in research that led to new medicines. NIH support contributed to the basic science underlying every one of the 210 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) between 2010 and 2016.

“Our data underscore the critical impact of government funding on drug discovery and development,” says Fred Ledley, MD, the study’s senior author and director of the Center for Integration of Science and Industry.

His team reviewed more than 2 million published research reports related to either new FDA-approved medicines or their biological targets during the study’s six-year time frame. The analysis identified 600,000 reports as the work product of NIH funded projects. More than 90 percent of this funding ties directly to research on the biological targets for drug action, rather than the drugs themselves, and represents basic biomedical research.

“Basic research can seem arcane,” says Ledley. “But reducing this funding would inevitably slow the pipeline of new treatments for diseases, which the public so desperately needs.”