Share of Linked Drugs Under Different Criteria

Compared with patents that directly acknowledge NIH funding, a much higher share link to NIH indirectly through citations.

The denominator consists of the 557 drugs with at least one preapproval Orange Book patent approved by the FDA between 2000 and 2023. There are 271 (48.6%) drug approvals that do not cite any at-risk NIH research. Of this set, 94 (16.9%) are associated with patents that do not reference any scientific publications; a further 132 (23.7%) have patents that do reference scientific publications, but none of these publications acknowledge NIH grant support. Last, 45 approvals (8.1%) have patents that do reference scientific publications that acknowledge NIH grant support, but none of these grants would disappear under our hypothetical 40% cut.
Source: ScienceCreated with Datawrapper