Sponsors (21)
Introduced April 9, 2025 by Stephanie I. Bice · Last progress April 9, 2025
This bill centralizes and funds federal biotechnology coordination to accelerate innovation, workforce development, and commercialization, but it increases federal spending and authority, reduces some transparency and oversight, and raises privacy, safety, and competition risks that will need active mitigation.
Researchers, small biotech firms, and entrepreneurs will get easier access to coordinated federal R&D funding, grants, joint solicitations, and a single federal point-of-contact/website that simplifies finding funding and regulatory guidance.
Students, trainees, and current tech workers will gain expanded workforce development, fellowships, curriculum support, and bioliteracy programs that increase hiring and career pathways in domestic biotechnology.
The federal government and critical infrastructure providers will get strengthened biodefense, biosafety, and cybersecurity measures (including stress‑testing of biological data), reducing some risks from data breaches and infrastructure compromise.
Taxpayers will face increased federal spending and a new executive office/staff with multi‑year obligations (including a 20‑year wind‑down), raising long‑term budgetary costs and fiscal commitments.
The bill exempts certain advisory activities from FACA and narrows transparency requirements, reducing public visibility into who influences policy and limiting routine disclosure of meeting records and minutes.
Authority concentrated in a Director and an Initiative that can advise OMB and coordinate across agencies could reduce agency independence, create administrative overreach, and produce long‑term regulatory uncertainty for industry and agencies.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Establishes a White House National Biotechnology Initiative and Coordination Office to align federal biotech strategy, data, security, workforce, and commercialization across agencies.
Creates a White House-led National Biotechnology Initiative and a National Biotechnology Coordination Office (NBCO) to align and coordinate federal biotechnology research, data, commercialization, workforce, biosafety/biosecurity, and regulatory activities across many agencies. Agency heads must designate senior liaisons, participate in an interagency committee, and carry out coordinated activities to support R&D, data infrastructure, private-sector translation, supply-chain and foreign-investment analyses, and public bioliteracy efforts. The NBCO Director serves as the President’s principal biotechnology adviser, can convene expert panels (exempt from the Federal Advisory Committee Act for certain convenings), advise on budget priorities, coordinate regulation and data stewardship, hire staff, and enter into agreements; key deadlines (committee and office establishment and Director appointment) are within 180 days of enactment.