US National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded biomedical research generates a respectable return on investment, according to the recent report 'Patents as proxies revisited: NIH innovation 2000 to 2013', released in March 2015 by the Battelle Memorial Institute. NIH grants yielded, on average, nearly $106 million in downstream R&D for each $100 million invested. Those downstream connections refer to private and public research organizations where NIH discoveries are further leveraged, leading to follow-on R&D spending equal to the original federal investment—supporting high-skilled, high-wage R&D jobs beyond the original grant period, the report notes. Its analysis is based on some 20,441 NIH-related patents issued during that 14-year period, greatly expanding a patent-based analysis from last year indicating that NIH-supported research generates transformational results with the potential for economic impact (Nat. Biotechnol. 32, 536–538, 2014). Of those NIH-related patents, drugs and related compositions account for one-third; advances in biochemistry and organic chemistry account for 44%, and a variety of “niche areas” of innovation with “important ongoing impacts” round out the remainder. After backing out costs for other mandated activities, NIH averaged 32 patents per $100 million in innovation-related activity, a figure that “compares favorably with the private sector,” the report notes. Battelle, a private nonprofit applied science and technology development company in Columbus, Ohio, prepared the expanded report for the Washington, DC–based Academy of Radiology Research, which supported the earlier analysis.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
NIH innovation investment pays. Nat Biotechnol 33, 324 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0415-324
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0415-324