In 1980 and 1983, Congress fundamentally changed the course of modern medicine.

The Bayh-Dole Act passed in 1980 empowered universities, small businesses and nonprofits to own and commercialize medical discoveries made with federally funded research. And in 1983, the Orphan Drug Act created incentives to develop treatments for rare diseases that had long been ignored because they were not commercially viable.

Together, these two pieces of legislation sparked the biotechnology revolution. They helped transform laboratory discoveries into world-changing companies such as Amgen, Genentech, Biogen and Gilead. And they established the United States as the unquestioned leader in biotechnology for more than four decades.

Clearly, Congress got it right. But today, America faces very different challenges.

While the United States still possesses the world’s finest research universities — and continues to produce extraordinary scientific discoveries — more and more of America’s leading research universities now face uncertainty over federal research funding. As a result, they’re reducing admissions to doctoral programs. And at the same time, the global pharmaceutical industry is already looking overseas for new innovation.

Just this month, AstraZeneca announced another multibillion-dollar licensing agreement with a Chinese biotechnology company — its second major deal in less than two weeks. The company has also committed $15 billion to expand its presence in China through 2030. Nearly every other major pharmaceutical company is also actively searching China for promising clinical-stage drug candidates.

This is happening just as America is weakening its scientific pipeline and allowing biotechnology innovation, development and manufacturing to migrate overseas.

China in particular has spent decades investing aggressively in scientific research, clinical development, manufacturing infrastructure and commercialization. Beijing understands that biotechnology is not simply another industry — it’s a strategic national capability with profound implications for economic growth, public health and national security.

America should respond now by building on previous strengths. For example, the Bayh-Dole Act solved one of the great policy challenges of its era — how to move discoveries from university laboratories into the private sector.

Today, we need to ensure that breakthroughs discovered in the United States will also be developed and manufactured domestically.

Too often, federally funded research leads to groundbreaking discoveries in the United States that are subsequently licensed abroad, manufactured abroad, or scaled elsewhere. Essentially, we celebrate the invention but inexplicably surrender the subsequent manufacturing capacity.

To rectify this, U.S. biotechnology should reconnect discovery with production. We need a modern biotechnology strategy that links America’s research universities with domestic pilot plants, fermentation facilities, active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturers and advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing.

To do so, the federal government should implement procurement policies to reward medicines manufactured in the United States, and use tax incentives to encourage companies to invest in the United States and manufacture domestically as well.

This is not about choosing between research and manufacturing. It is about recognizing that America must lead in both.

Scientific discovery without domestic production leaves supply chains vulnerable. Manufacturing without world-class research eventually loses its competitive edge. The two are inseparable.

The United States has done this before, in the semiconductor industry. Indeed, semiconductor production has benefited from renewed national investment because policymakers recognized that advanced manufacturing is essential to both economic prosperity and national security.

Biotechnology deserves the same attention — since life-saving medicines, critical antibiotics, vaccines and advanced biologics are just as important to national security as computer chips.

More than 40 years ago, Congress had the foresight to create a policy framework that launched the biotechnology revolution. Today, it has another historic opportunity.

America needs a Bayh-Dole 2.0 — not to replace one of the most successful innovation laws ever enacted but to build on it.

The next generation of bipartisan biotechnology policy should connect federally funded research to domestic manufacturing — and ensure that discoveries made with American ingenuity will create jobs, supply chains and strategic capabilities at home.

The first biotechnology revolution proved that America could invent the future.

The next one should prove that America can build it, too. If we succeed, the next Amgen won’t simply be discovered in America. It will be developed in America, manufactured in America, and exported from the United States to the world.

Jon Toomey is the president of the Coalition for a Prosperous America. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.