NIH funding and drug development
Flow of NIH funding to US congressional districts associated with drugs approved during 2010–2016.
The impact of public sector funding on drug development is not well understood, partly because this funding is focused on basic research, the translational impact of which is difficult to quantify. Ekaterina Galkina Cleary et al. (pp. 2329–2334) examined NIH support for published research associated with the 210 new drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration between 2010 and 2016. The authors identified more than 2 million scientific publications related to these drugs or to the drugs’ biological targets, 29% of which were associated with NIH-funded projects. NIH-funded publications were associated with every new drug and involved more than 200,000 total fiscal years of funding and more than $100 billion in project costs. More than 90% of these publications concerned the biological targets of the drugs, rather than the drugs themselves, and represent basic research. Eighty-four of the 210 new drugs were first-in-class and accounted for more than $64 billion in NIH funding. The results suggest that a substantial fraction of the NIH budget from 2000–2016 contributed directly or indirectly to the new drugs approved during 2010–2016, and that reduced public research funding might delay future drug development, according to the authors. — B.D.
Trends in farm energy use and crop production
Agricultural technology developed after World War II was strongly dependent on fossil fuels. The oil crisis of the 1970s highlighted unsustainable aspects of such technology. However, long-term, global trends in the relationship between agricultural energy use and crop production remain understudied. Pedro Pellegrini and Roberto Fernández (pp. 2335–2340) examined trends in agricultural energy use and crop production for 58 of the main crop-producing countries from 1961 to 2014. The authors used a database from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations to analyze energy use related to crop production and found that high crop intensification, assessed through the amount of energy use per hectare, occurred in 28 countries, whereas the remaining 30 countries had a low level of crop intensification over the study period; crop intensification was particularly high in Asia and Latin America. Worldwide, the authors observed a 137% increase in energy use per hectare, but only a 10% increase in land use. However, during the later decades of the study period, energy use did not increase as much as crop production across the globe, suggesting improved efficiency in the use of agricultural energy. According to the authors, developments in the fertilizer industry and improvements in agricultural technology might explain the findings. — C.S.