The Energy and Commerce Committee has announced that two hundred and thirty bipartisan members of Congress have added their names as co-sponsors of H.R. 6, the 21st Century Cures Act, signaling the continued support for the bill.
On May 21, 2015, the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously approved the 21st Century Cures Act—a 300 page bill reflecting a year-long legislative process to bring drug and device regulations up-to-date with current medical innovation. Co-sponsored by House Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-Texas) and Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), the bill focuses on the life-cycle of getting new treatments and cures to patients—from discovery, to development, to delivery.
Among the dozens of provisions, H.R. 6 provides significant funding to both the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, seeks to streamline clinical trials and accelerate the approval of safe and effective treatments, aims to incorporate the patient perspective into medical developments, and seeks to advance personalized, or precision medicine. Precision medicine allows doctors to use a patient’s DNA to fight diseases, by customizing gene therapy to each individual patient. The bill also seeks to modernize the regulations surrounding communication from manufacturers to healthcare providers and payers.
The legislation has received letters of support from hundreds of organizations, including patient groups, the Association of American Medical Colleges, sixty-seven cancer institutes, and seventy-five research, life sciences, and patient advocacy organizations.
We will continue to follow the developments of the Cures Act as it makes its way through the legislative process.