By using the COVID experience as an exemplar, a thorough assessment of rate-limited raw supplies that were in need during the pandemic should be a starting point. Instead of building the SNS only with completed drugs, medical supplies, and standard active pharmaceutical ingredients (or ‘API’s’), the SNS could grow a “warm base” of biologically produced materials through the bioeconomy’s expanding biomanufacturing industry. While the stockpile will still require the warehousing of emergency medical goods, it can also have a portion of its effort devoted to a more flexible and dynamic production capacity of bio-based essential materials. We now have the opportunity to create a modernized biotechnology construct for the SNS more consistent with its original inception - one that features agility and flexibility, that could meet a broader range of threats that will have more diverse needs, and takes advantage of the biotechnology revolution already happening in the US economy. in hands of foreign governments and global markets - and depleting DOD’s stockpiles leaves the armed forces at a potential disadvantage in terms of medical readiness should a conflict arise. This places the power to cut off supplies to the U.S. While this worked, it is not the way we should handle the next pandemic crisis. Large volume acquisitions from overseas suppliers, use of the Defense Department’s (DOD) stockpiles, and employment of the Defense Production Act managed to meet needs at the height of the pandemic’s spread. Government responders were able to meet the demands on our vulnerable medical supply chains through massive feats of logistics. Perhaps the most important, key feature of the stockpile is to house specialized medicines to protect against biological or chemical attacks against the US, such as the use of anthrax or nerve agents, requiring countermeasures that pharmaceutical companies would not produce otherwise. But as originally conceived, the SNS was never intended to supply the entire population of the US in a medical emergency, rather, it was created as a surge capacity: to set up transient medical field hospitals in individual public health emergencies, and provide a stop-gap, short-term back up to individual States’ stockpiles. They quickly learned, through life-or-death media stories, that the stockpile may not have enough supplies to cover patients’ needs across the country. Prior to COVID19, most Americans did not know of the existence of this strategic resource that the US had been investing in since its creation 1998. The word “stockpile” itself brings to mind cavernous warehouses in inconspicuous locations around the country, full of boxes, cartons, and pallets of emergency medical goods, slowly and inexorably approaching their expiration dates. Perhaps the best example of a static, antiquated response capability that typifies a lack of biotechnology modernization is the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS). biotechnology response capabilities not only can we greatly improve our capability to respond in the future, but at the same time, we can prototype the modernization of our bio-industrial base. “Lessons learned” assessments applied in the post-COVID environment now offer a timely opportunity to apply these recommendations as we remedy U.S. In our recommendations for how to successfully grow the US bioeconomy, we recommended a focus on reshoring US production capacity, creating new state and local businesses focused on biomanufacturing, and expanding the use of bio-based products. This has left very little surge capacity to respond to a global crisis, other than stockpiles of government owned materials which are not intended to cover all potential pandemics.Įarlier this year we described the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” in biotechnology, hallmarked by global competition between the US and China. The medical supply system has been optimized to reduce inventories and receive materials on a near ‘Just-in-Time’ basis. That opportune success notwithstanding, much of our approach to preparing for a pandemic is outdated. Many are now asking, what could we have done better in the pandemic response? We would argue that our biotechnology tools and platforms for responding have not kept up with scientific advances – with the fortunate exception of the rapid development and delivery of a truly novel type of vaccine. Response to a spreading illness in many ways is not rocket science: treat the sick, protect the vulnerable, and stop the spread – mainly accomplished via the tools and products of biotechnology. Many have acknowledged that the COVID19 pandemic was not a failure of our imagination – we’ve been preparing for such an event for decades by building biotechnologies for biosurveillance and medicines, conducting exercises, and stockpiling of medical supplies.
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