The amazing American university impact on drug innovation

In the 1990s, a famous scientist of English expatriates had a yellowed cutting published on the door of his office. He said: “British science is alive … and lives in the United States.”

In the future, a similar article could reflect China or other nations to successfully exploit decomposition in American research and development.

Behind almost all the prescriptions completed in America is a powerful engine of innovation, powered by research carried out in the country’s universities. Picking up a new prescription at the pharmacy represents the culmination of a choreography of several decades between the private, public and academic sectors which leads the medical innovation of this country and guarantees that the most sharp care and technology are available here.

In recent decades, fundamental science which informs the basic understanding of diseases of the human body or research applied to the development of treatments has almost always started in an American research university. While pharmaceutical companies, like Merck and Bayer, have become household names, there is rarely an understanding of the academic roots of a new medication or a new therapy: the foundations which, in most cases, go back to years or decades.

To quantify this impact, we have launched a research project, which is currently pre -printed, which has sought to ask questions about the value of American universities to society. We used the narrow area of ​​pharmaceutical drugs as a representative example.

Many things in the academic world are measured, graduation rates and the benefits of elders to the economic impact of a campus. Research results – which propel everything, from medicine and technology to military and environmental protection – offer another opportunity to assess the contributions of the country’s ivory towers. By identifying the inventors of drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (and the main patents organized in the Book of the FDA Orange), our examination revealed that from 2020 to 2024, universities contributed patents underlying 50% of the drugs approved by the FDA. Even more surprising, 87% of these academic breakthroughs came from American institutions.

The production of a patent listed in the Book of the FDA Orange is a high bar which requires rigorous criticism. These key patents can determine when a pioneer medication loses its owner protection and can be offered as a generic formulation. Historically, pharmaceutical companies have preferred to keep these precious jewels internally given financial yields, and our previous research show that before the 21st century, private sector companies dominated pharmaceutical patents and inventoriation. This domination began to crack during the new millennium, academic inventors and entrepreneurs playing an increasing role while we progressed in the 2000s and 2010s.

These new results have deep implications. From an economic point of view, pharmaceutical products represent a substantial and growing part of American consumption expenditure and economic activity. The 10 largest pharmaceutical companies have a combined market capitalization of more than 2 dollars. Our updated results show that over the past 50 years, these companies are increasingly dependent on university inventors to provide new drugs.

This value is even more remarkable since our new results are limited to applied research and do not include the impact of basic research carried out by many university scientists. The previous work of our team and others have shown that the fundamental science funded by NIH has contributed to the development of more than 90% of new drugs, vaccines and devices.

It must also be recognized that American domination of drug development allows the nation to determine – in fact, to dictate – the diseases studied and the interventions have developed. A recent survey in nature revealed that 75% of American scientists planned to leave the country. If the nation allowed its academic business to wither, decisions concerning the diseases to be dealt with and the therapies to be developed will be taken elsewhere.

The rise in American domination began in the post-war period according to the vision of Vannevar Bush, who led the Manhattan project and was adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Bush, in its founding report, “Science – The Endless Frontier”, argued for the need for basic research to ensure national and economic security. This myopia has enabled the United States to assert its management of the biotechnology revolution that started 50 years ago. The country’s public and economic health has benefited from both the training and conservation of the best minds in the world.

Looking towards the future, China has invested massively in university research and pharmaceutical development and seeks to move American hegemony. Such changes have previously occurred: the roots of the pharmaceutical industry were largely located in European countries, in particular the United Kingdom and Germany, during the first half of the 20th century.

The American institutions and the innovators in them succeeded according to a contract between the federal government and the American research universities. The result of major funding for research has created the country we know today and that is why America has been the dominant actor in the development of drugs to treat disease and improve the lives of people around the world. The country’s research universities are essential for pharmaceutical innovation, and continuous federal support for university research is essential to maintain American leadership in global development of drugs and wide economic growth.

Michael Kinch, Ph.D., is director of innovation at Stony Brook University. Kevin Gardner, Ph.D., is vice-president of research and innovation at Stony Brook University.