After the House of Representatives passed the House version of the Biosafety Act (H.R. 8333) with a high vote on September 10th, the US Senate has also taken new actions.
According to a reporter from Caixin News Agency, on the 23rd local time in the United States, Gary Peters, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, submitted an amendment to S.3558 to the Senate. S.3558, previously widely known as the Senate version of the Biosafety Act, was passed with 11 votes in favor and 1 vote against at the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing held in March this year.
This revision reflects the results of the previous hearing of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. At the March hearing, substantive amendments to the bill were requested, "said Zhan Kai, a partner lawyer at Shanghai Yuanda Winston who is familiar with the legislative operation of the US Congress, in an interview with Caixin reporters.
In this amendment, S.3558 is officially named the 2024 Prohibition of Foreign Access to US Genetic Information Act. The Caixin reporter found that the US Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee made some deletions and modifications based on the early version, but the list of entities involved has not changed. WuXi AppTec did not appear on the list, while WuXi AppTec and BGI are still listed. In the House version of the Biosafety Act (H.R. 8333), WuXi Biologics has been mentioned
In addition, the "grandfather clause" added by the amendment to the House version of the Biosafety Act (H.R. 8333) did not appear in the S.3558 amendment.
At the hearing of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee in May, the Biosafety Act (H.R. 8333) added a "grandfather clause" to provide a longer buffer period for US biopharmaceutical companies to conduct business with Chinese companies involved, extending the exemption of existing contracts/products until January 1, 2032. At that time, the industry generally believed that this represented a compromise made by the perception of opposition from the US biopharmaceutical industry by the political arena.
On September 10th local time in the United States, the House of Representatives voted to review the Biosafety Act (H.R. 8333), which was ultimately passed with 306 votes in favor, 81 votes against, and 44 abstentions. According to the official website of the US Congress, the bill has been submitted to the US Senate and forwarded to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.
Additionally, it is worth mentioning that the proposers of the Biosafety Act in both the US House of Representatives and the Senate previously attempted to include the bill in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 (NDAA). However, based on the current progress of NDAA legislation, the attempt by the Biosafety Act to free ride has not been successful.
Regarding the name change of the S.3558 amendment, both Zhan Kai and Zhao Heng, founder of Latitude Health, a medical strategy consulting firm, believe that this represents an attempt by the US Senate to dilute the color of targeting Chinese CXOs in order to reach a majority consensus.
Specifically, WuXi AppTec and WuXi Biologics have previously issued multiple public announcements, stating that "the company does not have any human genomics business, and its existing businesses do not involve collecting human genome data in the United States, China, or any other region
Zhan Kai told the Caixin reporter that compared to the original version, the S.3558 amendment focuses on content and companies related to genetic business, and the specific entities and "grandfather clause" involved in the US House of Representatives may become a potential point of divergence between the two houses. More time is still needed to bridge the differences on this issue in the future.
It is worth mentioning that according to the official website of the United States Congress, the S.3558 amendment has been included in the Senate legislative agenda by general order, with agenda number 521.
Caixin reporters have preliminarily checked the relevant schedule on the official website of the US Senate and have not yet found a specific meeting schedule for the S.3558 amendment.
The US presidential election is about to be voted on November 5th, and some Senate members will be re elected. The remaining session of the US Senate this year is running out. Zhan Kai said, "There is indeed a significant challenge for this bill to come into effect within this year, and the time is very tight. However, it cannot be completely ruled out that it may be passed separately or bundled with the NDAA at the end of the year in the near future." Zhao Heng believes that "the possibility of independent legislation is relatively high
On today's market, there were unusual movements in the WuXi AppTec system, with WuXi AppTec (02359.HK) experiencing a sharp rise at noon before starting to decline, closing down over 2%; WuXi Biologics (02269. HK) closed up 4%, while Huada Intelligent Manufacturing (688114. SH) closed slightly down 0.24% today.