April 2016

This week, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP), chaired by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), unanimously passed legislation that would address antibiotic resistance in the U.S. by incentivizing the development of new antibiotics. The ATS is supporting the bill, called the Promise for Antibiotics and Therapeutics (PATH) Act, S. 185. Sponsored by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Michael Bennet (D-CO), it would create a new, faster Food and Drug Administration approval pathway for new antibiotics with a limited patient population for which there is an unmet need, such as drug- resistant pneumonia, sepsis and tuberculosis infections.

The Committee passed several other health research measures, including the Promoting Biomedical Research and Public Health for Patients Act, which Sens. Alexander and Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced late last week. This bill aims to reduce administrative burdens for NIH-funded researchers and authorize the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) to support later-phase clinical trials.  Both the PATH Act and measures similar to the Biomedical Research and Public Health for Patients Act passed the House of Representatives last year as part of the House's 21st Century Cures Act. The HELP Committee is attempting to bring the bills passed this week and others to a floor vote as part of a Senate version of the 21st Century Cures bill, but the committee has not yet reached agreement on NIH funding overall. The ATS Washington Office will continue to monitor the Senate progress of both of these bills.