Life Sciences Horizons Brochure 2025 - Flipbook - Page 120
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2025 Horizons Life Sciences and Health Care
BIOSECURE stalled in 2024, but may resurface
Certain Chinese contract manufacturing and
development organizations (CDMOs) named as
“companies of concern” in the proposed 2024
“BIOSECURE Act,” and their business partners let out a
collective sigh of relief late last year when BIOSECURE
did not make it into end-of-year legislation. With the
Trump administration already flexing its muscles to
put pressure on China, and with Republicans in control
of both houses of Congress, the BIOSECURE Act
could well be taken up again this year.
The bill was touted as a national security measure intended to
curtail the sharing of genomic data with CDMOs that were
considered to present a risk of sharing the data with foreign
adversary governments. In practice, the most current version of
BIOSECURE would have prohibited Federal agencies from
contracting with biopharmaceutical and other manufacturers
who would supply biotechnology products or services obtained
from these identified companies of concern in the performance
of their Federal contracts. Given the nature of this prohibition,
subcontractors and suppliers linked with these Federal contracts
would have been impacted, as well. However, companies that
enter contracts providing for reimbursement or payment under
Federal health programs were specifically excluded from
BIOSECURE’s coverage.
BIOSECURE specifically named five companies as “companies of
concern,” and applied the contracting restriction to them as well
as all subsidiary, parent, affiliate, and any successor entities.
Additional companies could be added based on a determination
of national security risk.
BIOSECURE garnered strong bipartisan support last year despite
the inability of its sponsors to add it to a legislative package before
year-end. Some legislators opposed to the bill expressed
concerns that the BIOSECURE restrictions could impact access
to needed biotherapies within the embedded Veterans
Administration and Department of Defense TRICARE Federal
health programs. Others expressed concerns regarding the bill’s
“automatic” application of the Federal contracting prohibition to
the set of five named companies without any due process or
opportunity for them to respond to perceived national security
concerns.
We are continuing to monitor BIOSECURE developments closely
in 2025.
Joy Sturm
Partner
Washington, D.C.
Michael Druckman
Partner
Washington, D.C.
Tim Bergreen
Senior Counsel
Washington, D.C.
Lauren Colantonio
Associate
Washington, D.C.
