Small Molecules Get Short Shrift, Jeff Jonker and the IRA

With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the US Government has fully embraced the idea of mandating price controls for therapies paid for by Medicare. However, the IRA handles large molecules and small molecules differently, as the government negotiates prices at year 9 for small molecules, but year 13 for large molecules. Practically, this means that small molecules will be disincentivized by the U.S. government, losing four years of revenue when compared to biologics.

On this Vital Health Podcast, Jeff Jonker, the CEO of Belharra Therapeutics, discusses the implications of the IRA for his early-stage private biotech company focused on the discovery of the next generation of small molecule-based medicines. Belharra Therapeutics is one of the many platform companies to emerge from California trying to find new approaches to drug discovery.

While the backbone of the California biotech sector has traditionally been ‘large molecule’ biologics, there has been a resurgence of R&D focused on traditional medicinal chemistry and small molecules like those being pursued by Belharra Therapeutics. The IRA puts funding pressures both on an already challenging R&D environment for small molecules, and the U.S. biopharma ecosystem writ large.