How the NIH Fuels Private Business

A new report details the ways in which the federal science agency boost the US economy by stimulating the private sector.

Written byBob Grant

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WIKIMEDIA, US DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURYResearch supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) added $69 billion to the US gross domestic product and supported 7 million jobs in 2011 alone, according to a new report released by United for Medical Research, a coalition of industry, academic, and society partners that advocates for robust NIH budgets. The report also highlights specific examples of NIH funding that helped private companies get off the ground to become thriving members of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.

Signature Genomics, for example, is a company that started with a new technology—microarray comparative genomic hybridization—developed by two NIH-funded researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. After being licensed and sublicensed, the technology was purchased in 2010 by PerkinElmer for $90 million.

Another company, TomoTherapy Inc., has changed the way that cancer is treated with radiation. University of Wisconsin researcher Thomas Mackie, who was supported by NIH grants for years, founded the company in 1997 with colleague Paul Reckwerdt after refining a technology that could zap tumors with radiation in an even manner. Today TomoTherapy employs 1,100 people worldwide, and its fiscal year 2012 revenue exceeded $400 million.

“The fact is that the next big medical breakthrough, and the next billion-dollar business idea, may ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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