Senators on both sides of the aisle are trying to incentivize the development of new drugs for newborn babies and medical countermeasures via a new exclusivity voucher and a priority review voucher system that are similar to the voucher programs already linked to tropical and rare pediatric disease treatments.

Pediatric populations historically suffer from a dearth of medical therapies; few new medications are tested on and approved specifically for infants and young children. Now a new bill introduced in the U.S. Senate hopes to change all that. S. 2041, “The Promoting Life-saving New Therapies for Neonates Act of 2015,” offers pharmaceutical developers an intriguing trade-off: a one-year, transferrable extension on patent exclusivity in exchange for a new medical therapy that treats a critical need condition for pre-term or full-term infants