Larson Calls for Investment in American Manufacturing to Prevent Prescription Shortages

Washington, D.C. - Today, in the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. John B. Larson (CT-01) praised UConn School of Pharmacy’s cutting-edge research in advancing prescription drug production and called on Congress to fund their work.

You can view Rep. Larson’s remarks here. 

“In last year's spending bill, we authorized the FDA to designate five higher education institutions as national centers for excellence in advanced and continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing,” said Larson. “This designation would mean investing in domestic manufacturing and innovation. Unfortunately, when we continued to struggle to fully fund the government, the program remains unfunded.” 

Rep. Larson asked Dr. Julie Gralow, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, on the need to invest in continuous manufacturing to reduce drug shortages. 

“Dr. Gralow, in your comments you talked about continuing manufacturing, and why that is so vitally important. It should be of interest to everyone. Could you also explain the current process of batching and why that leads to extra costs and inefficiency,” Larson asked. 

“Continuous manufacturing would mean you’ve always got ongoing processing of either the active pharmaceuticals or of the drug,” replied Dr. Gralow. “The batching that you referred to, is a more standard practice, older model. Every time you shift in and out, these are sterile and injectable drugs that go into patients, so when you have to switch your assembly line, there is a cost involved with switching to another drug, switching to another ingredient, and that shuts it down. The continuous process of ‘in the background it’s always being made’ is just more efficient and more resilient, because if something happens, and it disrupts the whole supply chain, you don’t have big batches of something and not enough of another.” 

In 2022, Rep. Larson voted for the Inflation Reduction Act to lower prescription drug costs for seniors and empower Medicare to directly negotiate prices for consumers, and the Consolidated Appropriations Act, bolstering funding for biomedical research, including continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing to address drug shortages.