House Committee advances legislation to secure biotech data

The USA’s House Committee on Oversight and Accountability held a markup meeting yesterday to consider a series of bills that address federal agency procurement of biotechnology equipment, safeguarding taxpayer dollars, improving federal cybersecurity, and more.

Among these was the HR 8333, the BIOSECURE Act, Representative Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Rep Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill).

The committee voted 40-1 in favor of the BIOSECURE Act, which was updated last week to give US companies with an existing contract until 2032 to cut ties with any suspect firms. The bill’s initial blacklist includes Chinese contract research organization WuXi AppTec (SHA: 603259) and its affiliate WuXi Biologics, as well as BGI Group, MGI Tech, and Complete Genomics.