By Lina Irawan 
However, a transformative shift appears to be underway. This spring, Revolution Medicines announced groundbreaking results for its experimental treatment, daraxonrasib, offering a beacon of hope for those battling pancreatic cancer. The drug, still in clinical trials, has demonstrated a remarkable ability to nearly double survival rates in patients who had exhausted all other therapeutic options. This is not merely an incremental improvement; in a disease where every additional month of life is a precious victory, such an outcome verges on the miraculous. The personal testimony of former Senator Ben Sasse underscores this profound impact. A year ago, Sasse was given a grim prognosis of just one month to live. Thanks to his access to daraxonrasib, he is not only still alive but actively enjoying time with his family and engaging in public life, touring the country for media interviews – a testament to the drug’s potential to redefine the trajectory of this devastating disease.
Yet, as impressive as daraxonrasib‘s preliminary results are, it is crucial to recognize that this breakthrough is not a sudden miracle. Instead, it is the predictable and hard-won outcome of a sophisticated and interconnected legal, financial, and regulatory ecosystem meticulously developed over the past five decades. This system, predominantly pioneered and refined in the United States, has become the global gold standard for transforming nascent scientific insights into tangible, life-saving medicines. Its robust framework of intellectual property protection, venture capital funding, rigorous but adaptive regulatory pathways, and a deep commitment to basic scientific research has fostered an unparalleled environment for biomedical innovation, a model so successful that nations like China are actively striving to replicate it.
The very fact that China seeks to emulate this American model of biotech innovation should be a source of national pride and a powerful motivator for continued leadership. Instead, a concerning wave of protectionist sentiment is sweeping through Washington, threatening to undermine the very foundations of this success. Recent legislative proposals, such as the "Biotech Investment National Security Act" introduced by House lawmakers, aim to subject licensing deals involving Chinese companies to stringent national-security reviews. While proponents frame these as mere screenings, the biotech industry, which thrives on speed, certainty, and global collaboration, understands that such measures will effectively function as a de facto ban. This initiative builds upon a growing roster of protectionist actions, including the previously enacted BIOSECURE Act, efforts to bar the FDA from accepting clinical trial data originating from China, and a looming 100% tariff on imported medicines and their ingredients slated for July 31.
The rationale behind these measures often cites concerns about intellectual property theft, data security, and the desire to reduce reliance on foreign supply chains, particularly from a strategic competitor like China. However, many experts argue that walling off the American biotech sector is a self-defeating strategy. While it is true that China is rapidly advancing its biotech capabilities, the optimal response from the United States should be to accelerate the pace of American innovation, not to retreat from global competition. By isolating our industry, we risk slowing down critical research and development, ultimately harming patients and ceding leadership in a vital sector.
This moment is particularly urgent given the approaching "patent cliff" in the pharmaceutical industry. By 2030, an estimated $350 billion in annual drug sales – roughly one-fifth of projected global prescription-drug revenue – will face generic and biosimilar competition as their patents expire. This impending loss of exclusivity places immense pressure on pharmaceutical manufacturers to discover and develop new therapies capable of sustaining future medical innovation. For patients, this pressure represents a significant opportunity, as it incentivizes the development of breakthroughs for thousands of rare diseases that currently lack treatments, and for chronic killers like cardiovascular disease and various forms of cancer.
The critical question then becomes: where will these new therapies originate? Increasingly, U.S. firms are looking to China’s burgeoning biotech pipeline for its high-quality assets and innovative molecules. China now accounts for nearly a third of the innovative drug candidates licensed by major pharmaceutical companies globally. The sheer volume of collaboration underscores this trend; in the first half of 2025 alone, U.S. companies entered into 37 partnerships to license drug assets from Chinese firms. These collaborations often involve early-stage compounds discovered in China, which are then brought into the U.S. development pipeline for further research, clinical trials, and eventual commercialization. This synergistic approach allows American capital and expertise to accelerate promising scientific discoveries from around the world.
History offers a powerful lesson. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, America’s response was not to wall itself off from Soviet science. Instead, it was to double down on investment in its own scientific research and education, sparking an era of unprecedented innovation and technological leadership. The same strategy applies today. To outcompete China, which boasts a talent pool of 1.4 billion people, America must leverage not only its 340 million citizens but also the brilliance of the other seven-plus billion people worldwide.
The daraxonrasib story itself exemplifies the power of global talent. Its development was spearheaded by Kevan Shokat, the son of an Iranian immigrant, and advanced by Stephen Kelsey, a British scientist working at an American company. When the world’s brightest minds converge in a single place, driven by a common purpose, they possess the collective intellect to solve the most intractable problems. Restricting high-skilled immigration, therefore, directly undermines America’s ability to attract and retain this essential global talent pool, effectively building walls around our own potential for innovation.
Furthermore, outcompeting China necessitates a continued robust commitment to publicly funded basic scientific research. The underlying biology that paved the way for daraxonrasib and similar cancer treatments was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for several decades before any private company was willing or able to invest in making a practical medicine. Basic research, often highly speculative and without immediate commercial application, forms the bedrock of future breakthroughs. It bridges the "valley of death" in drug development, where early-stage discoveries are too risky for private capital but essential for future therapies. If federal research budgets are slashed, as evidenced by the proposed NIH funding cuts in 2025, which a survey found led significantly fewer young biomedical researchers to plan to stay in America, we risk stifling our scientists and losing a race we are otherwise poised to win.
Beyond talent and foundational research, America’s biotech sector also benefits immensely from strategic global partnerships. Many early-stage U.S. biotechs, with their limited capital, leverage China’s capacity for cheap, fast, and high-quality chemistry and human trials to conduct initial studies. This allows them to take more "shots on goal" – to test more potential drug candidates – at a lower cost, thereby increasing the probability of discovering a breakthrough. Larger pharmaceutical giants, including Bristol Myers Squibb, Takeda, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline, are increasingly entering similar deals. This model, where American capital pulls the most promising science from around the globe into our own development pipeline, is a strength that should be celebrated, not obstructed. Walling off China would not only slow innovation but also make it significantly harder for U.S. companies to navigate the looming patent cliff. Perhaps even more concerning, such restraints would not apply to foreign firms like AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, and Novartis, putting U.S. companies at a severe competitive disadvantage without actually bolstering the U.S. biotech sector.
Of course, legitimate scrutiny is warranted. Concerns about data integrity, informed consent, and the involvement of entities like the People’s Liberation Army hospitals in clinical trials conducted abroad raise serious ethical and national security questions. Where China’s speed or cost advantages stem from practices that compromise patient safety or ethical standards, or from data that the FDA cannot independently verify, that represents an ethical line that cannot be crossed. However, the appropriate response to such misconduct is not a sweeping, indiscriminate ban that punishes legitimate collaboration. Instead, it demands targeted enforcement and robust accountability mechanisms. American companies operating abroad must be held to the highest ethical standards, just as they are under existing legislation like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for bribery or for forced labor in supply chains.
Ultimately, patients suffering from pancreatic cancer, or any other life-threatening disease, are not concerned with the geographical origin of a medical breakthrough. Their only concern is whether a cure or effective treatment reaches them in time. The promise of more daraxonrasibs in the years ahead hinges on Washington’s ability to foster an environment that prioritizes innovation, collaboration, and competitive growth over isolationist protectionism. By focusing on making America the undisputed best place in the world to research, develop, and commercialize new drugs – through investment in talent, basic science, and smart global engagement – we can ensure that the cruelest access problem in healthcare continues to shrink, bringing hope to millions.
Craig Garthwaite, Ph.D., M.P.P., is the Herman R. Smith Research Professor in Hospital and Health Services, a Professor of Strategy, and the Director of the Program on Healthcare at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
