Secretary Raimondo Announces $153 Million to Promote Innovation in Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing
$83 million in funding comes from the American Rescue Plan to support research and development to prevent, prepare for and respond to coronavirus outbreaks
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has made two awards
totaling $153 million to the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing
Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL). The awards were
announced today by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo at the NIIMBL
annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
NIIMBL is a public-private
partnership designed to accelerate innovation in the U.S. biopharmaceutical
industry, which produces vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, gene therapies and
other medical products derived from biological sources. NIIMBL is a Manufacturing USA® institute
sponsored by the Department of Commerce.
“I am so pleased that NIIMBL will
continue to bring together organizations of all types to help strengthen our
nation through better pandemic preparedness and a more agile manufacturing
industry,” said Secretary Raimondo, who was joined at the NIIMBL meeting by
Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, Acting Commissioner of the Food and Drug
Administration Janet Woodcock and Director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics
Evaluation and Research Peter Marks. “This important investment for America,
funded in part by President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, will help meet the
nation’s need for lifesaving biopharmaceuticals.”
The first award renews NIST’s
federal sponsorship of NIIMBL, providing $70 million over five years with an
equal, non-federal cost-matching requirement. This award will allow NIIMBL to
continue driving innovation in domestic biopharmaceutical manufacturing by
developing flexible, agile and cost-effective manufacturing processes that can
be scaled up quickly and are less reliant on foreign supply chains.
NIST will also provide $83 million
to NIIMBL over three years from the American Rescue Plan to
support research and development to prevent, prepare for and respond to
coronavirus outbreaks.
During the COVID-19 pandemic,
scientific and manufacturing innovation delivered vaccines in record time. The
new funding will enable NIIMBL efforts to help transform this emergency
response into a sustainable, ongoing effort to address the continuing
coronavirus threat. NIIMBL will do this by developing efficient, robust processes
for manufacturing vaccines and therapeutics for COVID-19 and other coronavirus
strains that could emerge in the future.
As part of this effort, NIIMBL will
work to increase the shelf life and reduce the amount of refrigeration required
for messenger RNA vaccines, boost capabilities for rapid production of antigens
used in testing and screening for new variants and develop novel technologies
for detecting counterfeit vaccines, among other things.
NIIMBL works on challenges that are
too big for any single organization to address. The institute brings together
more than 180 members, including biopharmaceutical and biotechnology companies,
raw materials suppliers, equipment and product manufacturers, academic research
institutions, state governments and nonprofit organizations focused on global
health initiatives and workforce development. Every $1 of federal investment in
NIIMBL has been matched by $1.80 in funding from NIIMBL member organizations.
Since NIIMBL was launched in 2017,
its efforts have led to better diagnostic testing and plasma donor screening,
an injectable antibody therapeutic that reduces the need for intravenous
administration, and improved supply chain models for meeting surging demand
during COVID outbreaks.
To learn more about NIIMBL, visit
the institute’s website.
The Manufacturing USA institutes and
their sponsors, the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Defense and Energy, connect
more than 2,000 organizations across hundreds of major projects to quickly move
technology from laboratory prototypes to industrial capabilities and provide
thousands of people with advanced manufacturing knowledge and skills. To learn
more about Manufacturing USA, visit www.ManufacturingUSA.com.
NIST promotes U.S. innovation and
industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and
technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of
life. To learn more about NIST, visit NIST.gov.
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