Biosecure Act Update Gives Companies Up to Eight Years to Wrap Up Contracts

An updated version of the Biosecure Act gives US businesses until 2032 to decouple from four Chinese biotech companies identified as being of “particular concern” over data mining on behalf of the Chinese government.

The new House version (H.R.8333) of the Biosecure Act (H.R.7085) would specifically prohibit any US commercial arrangements with the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), MGI Tech, WuXi Biologics, and WuXi AppTec, all of which the bill labels “biotechnology companies of concern.” These companies have been repeatedly accused of threatening national security by mining US and European data for the Chinese government.

Without these grace periods, the restrictions posed in the act would be an enormous supply headache for US pharmaceutical companies, according to a new survey by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO). Of the 124 US biopharmaceutical companies surveyed, 79 percent had at least one contract with a Chinese manufacturer.

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