Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, on Tuesday, my colleague Senator Menendez and I introduced the Securing America's Medicine Cabinet--or SAM-C Act--to encourage an increase in American manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients. These are termed APIs.

We did this because China dominates this portion of the pharmaceutical manufacturing and given last night's news, I wanted to come back for a moment and highlight the important work that is being done in Tennessee and across the country to support our Nation's response to this coronavirus pandemic.

Many Americans are very concerned, as they ought to be, about the availability of testing. As you all know, this virus is novel, which means we did not have test kits on the shelves before the outbreak started. The tests that we do have are not instant. When people think of an instant test, they think of a flu test or a pregnancy test. The test that is required for this virus is not an instant test, but this is in the works, and we do have top scientists at Vanderbilt University and other institutions who are developing faster techniques, but, for now, any test offered must be sent to a lab to be processed and analyzed. Although these tests provide important information, we must continue to focus on preventing transmission where we can.

Some of the other work that is being done will help lead us to a faster path for antivirals and for vaccines. There is work in East Tennessee, right outside of Knoxville, at the Oak Ridge National Lab. Researchers have been using cutting-edge technology to identify drug candidates for targeting the novel coronavirus. They are using Summit, which is the world's fastest supercomputer. What they have done is feed in information about the coronaviruses, MRSA, SARS, and H1N1--the different viruses--and they crunched it down, and they have identified 77 drug candidates for targeting the novel coronavirus that we know is COVID-19. Enabled by the screening of this database of more than 8,000 known drug compounds, the researchers accomplished in days what would have taken years for scientists to do in the lab.

In my remarks on the floor yesterday, I went into detail about the decades-long effort by scientists at Vanderbilt University's Denison Lab to study coronaviruses. I want to reiterate one important point-- that all across the country, scientists just like our friends at Vanderbilt are developing the antivirals and the vaccines that will eventually be used to combat multiple strains of virus, not just this particular outbreak but in addition to this outbreak.

The United States is a leader in research and development of pharmaceuticals. Our labs, talent, and capacity for innovation are the envy of the world, but right now we depend heavily on Chinese and foreign companies to manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredients. When this happens, we lose control of our supply.

So while we have all of this great work done in Oak Ridge, TN, and we have this wonderful work done in the Denison Lab at Vanderbilt, we need something like the SAM-C Act to enable us to have access to these drugs and these compounds that they are identifying that we need. The SAM-C Act will not solve our immediate problem. Once passed, it will incentivize companies that specialize in development, manufacturing, and workforce training to bring those operations back to the safety of U.S.-based labs and institutes of learning, and it will expedite having the antivirals and the vaccines that are needed to prevent this.

I encourage all of my colleagues to think ahead, offer their support to S. 3432, and let's commit to securing our pharmaceutical supply chain.

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