NSCEB and Industry Leaders call for Greater National Focus on Biotechnology Grand Challenges
Public-private partnerships are key to unlocking leap-ahead capabilities in biotechnology that will secure American leadership in this sector
28 May 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Cambridge, Massachusetts – Today, Dr. Angela Belcher, Commissioner on the bipartisan National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB), participated in an event hosted at the Broad Institute. The event brought together leaders from across the biotechnology industry to identify transformative opportunities in biomedical research and development that align with a shared national vision for faster, more effective science.
Bold and creative public-private partnerships can overcome the bottlenecks of biotechnology scale-up, infrastructure development, and innovation. These challenges can only be tackled by the federal government, academia, and industry working together, leaning on the experience, knowledge, and pioneering spirit of innovators.
In its recent report to Congress, the NSCEB urges the United States to take swift action to bring the full weight of American innovation and investment to the biotechnology sector. It recommends Grand Challenges to unbridle American ingenuity and inspire innovators to reach for ‘leap-ahead capabilities’ in biotechnology that will help galvanize the next great achievements in scientific discovery.
“As an inventor and entrepreneur, I have firsthand experience of how strong public-private partnerships enable innovation. In the age of biotechnology, our national focus should be to discover and build bold new technologies that have tangible and positive impacts for generations to come.” Dr. Angela Belcher, NSCEB Commissioner
“Thanks to decades of discovery and many powerful collaborations, this generation of scientists is poised to deliver on the promise of new medicines and therapies that target the root of human disease and offer real cures, not just treatment of symptoms. We’ll need to set ambitious goals and tackle them together, through partnerships across academia, industry, and the federal government that will drive meaningful and tangible progress against cancer, diabetes, heart disease, mental illness, rare disease, and much more within the next decade.” Todd Golub, Director of the Broad Institute
About NSCEB: The National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology is a time-limited, high-impact legislative branch advisory entity whose purpose is to advance and secure biotechnology, biomanufacturing, and associated technologies for U.S. national security and to prepare the United States for the biorevolution. The Commission published a comprehensive report in April 2025, including recommendations for action by Congress and the federal government. The bipartisan Commission is composed of Congressionally-appointed Commissioners with members from both the Senate and the House of Representatives as well as experts from industry, academia, and government. For more information about the Commission and to view the report, visit biotech.senate.gov.
About the Broad Institute: The Broad Institute is an independent, non-profit research organization whose mission is to understand the roots of disease and close the gap between new biological insights and impact for patients. Founded in 2004 by the visionary Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, the Broad Institute exists at the intersection of scientific disciplines, convening scientists and other experts from genomics, cell biology, chemistry, engineering, neuroscience, therapeutics, artificial intelligence/machine learning, computational biology, and public health. The Broad Institute engages thousands of scientists from academic institutions and leading corporate partners from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, all who share the goal of translating research findings into safe and effective therapeutic interventions for all common and rare diseases.
Contacts:
NSCEB: press@biotech.senate.gov
Broad Institute: communications@broadinstitute.org
