On November 15, 2024, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a report by the Biomanufacturing Interagency Working Group entitled “Building a Vibrant Domestic Biomanufacturing Ecosystem.” The Working Group includes representatives from the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of State, the National Security Council, OSTP, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In response to President Biden’s September 2022 Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy, the report describes the current state of U.S. biomanufacturing capacity and identifies key factors driving growth. The Working Group states that it identified 11 actions through stakeholder engagement that the federal government could consider to continue increasing U.S. biomanufacturing capacity:

• Further leverage federal procurement programs and incentives to increase the U.S. market share of biobased and biotechnology-derived products and services, and ensure tools are in place to accurately measure resulting economic growth;
• Create right-sized federal incentives to accommodate the range of sizes of biotechnology and biomanufacturing companies;
• Engage in international partnerships to address cross-border challenges that otherwise limit the global footprint of U.S. biomanufacturing, such as intellectual property protection and enforcement, barriers to market entry abroad, and international market competitiveness;
• Enable further technology advances by supporting research and development (R&D) and initiatives that improve biomanufacturing scale-up efficiency;
• Encourage further development and utilization of a diverse and sustainable biomanufacturing feedstock supply chain as input material for biomanufacturing;
• Encourage biomanufacturing industry adoption of established corporate manufacturing best practices that minimize environmental impacts and conserve energy to lower operational costs and speed production output timelines;
• Continue to expand the availability of U.S. biomanufacturing scale-up infrastructure through a distributed network;
• Further integrate the emerging U.S. bioeconomy with the clean energy economy to enable a sustainable commercial biomanufacturing ecosystem;
• Advance U.S. biological risk management for biotechnology and biomanufacturing R&D;
• Continue to modernize biomanufacturing digital infrastructure to meet ecosystem informatics needs; and
• Further expand and diversify the U.S. talent pool for biotechnology and biomanufacturing jobs and careers to promote innovation and advance equity.

The report states that the next step “is to coordinate efforts across government to address these proposed actions, such as through the National Bioeconomy Board.” The report suggests that this could be accomplished by aligning current investments within federal agencies to support the identified actions, establishing priorities, and identifying funding gaps to inform future budget requests. The report notes that full implementation of the proposed actions “is subject to the annual President’s Budget process and the availability of appropriations.”