Alliance Testimony to Senate Committee on the Judiciary Supports PERA Act
Published July 14, 2026
Today, Alliance for Aging Research President & CEO Sue Peschin, MHS, delivered the following testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, “From Genes to Machines: The Patent Eligibility Debate”:
Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Durbin, and members of the Committee, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here. Before I get started I also want to join others in saying I’m deeply sorry for the loss of your longtime colleague and friend, Senator Graham. And Senator Durbin thank you for sharing your personal stories.
My name is Sue Peschin, and I serve as President and CEO of the Alliance for Aging Research. At the Alliance, we are changing the narrative to achieve healthy aging and fair access to care.
Personally, I am also a family caregiver to my mom, who is 85 and lives with kidney disease, arthritis, and dementia. Today’s hearing is not an abstract policy debate for older patients and family caregivers—this is about lives, choices, and hope.
It’s important to understand why passage of the bipartisan “Patent Eligibility Restoration Act,” or PERA, has become urgent. For 15 years, the U.S. patent system has struck down thousands of patents and failed to protect some of the most transformative innovations in diagnostics—not because they weren’t new or useful—but because a series of Supreme Court rulings created confusion while broadening patent ineligibility and invalidation.
This problem is especially severe in medical diagnostics. The Supreme Court’s expanded exceptions for laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas have made many diagnostic inventions ineligible for patents. As a result, the Patent Office often rejects applications for methods that detect disease, measure biomarkers, or convert biological discoveries into practical clinical tools.
A 2022 study in the Washington and Lee Law Review found that, within only four years after one of the key cases, investment in diagnostics fell more than $9 billion short of what it otherwise would have been.
The cost of lost diagnoses for families is why the Alliance for Aging Research strongly supports PERA. The bill would restore clarity to the eligibility section of the Patent Act—so that inventors of medical discoveries can reliably make their way from the lab to doctors and their patients.
I want to note that patent eligibility doesn’t guarantee patent approval; it just lets the Patent Office consider an invention. Without patent protection, many of these tests are never developed or they sit on a shelf.
One of the clearest examples is in Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. v. Sequenom, Inc. Sequenom developed a noninvasive prenatal test that could detect fetal abnormalities from a simple maternal blood sample, sparing moms and babies the risks of amniocentesis. It was a genuine scientific breakthrough.
Yet the Federal Circuit invalidated the patents. Judge Richard Linn stated in his concurrence that the invention was exactly the kind of advance the patent system is meant to encourage and protect, but the Mayo decision compelled him to strike it down. He called on Congress to resolve the confusion.
A similar situation arose when university researchers developed biopsy tests that could predict brain metastases in melanoma patients. But patents on these methods were denied under the Mayo and Myriad standards, forcing researchers to abandon their efforts. As a result, many melanoma patients learn their cancer has spread to their brain after the fact, when they may only have weeks left to live.
PERA would largely eliminate those barriers and let those diagnostics be judged under the normal patentability rules.
What we stand to lose in the near future is as concerning as what patients have already lost.
Researchers are developing detection tests that have the potential to identify several cancers at once through a simple blood draw. These tests look for patterns in DNA and protein markers that can indicate the presence of early‑stage cancer cells. Catching these cancers earlier will improve survival rates and reduce the burden of treatment for older adults.
The promising work in development for biomarker-based diagnostics in Parkinson’s is also critical, as seniors facing Parkinson’s often endure years of visiting multiple doctors before receiving a diagnosis. Today, there is no single definitive test.
This is exactly the kind of innovation America should be leading. But if diagnostic patents remain unpredictable in the U.S., investor capital will move elsewhere.
Members of the Committee, it’s encouraging to see bipartisan leadership on this issue. There is shared agreement that something is wrong and shared commitment to fix it.
On behalf of the Alliance for Aging Research, older patients, and caregivers across the country, I respectfully urge this Committee and Congress to pass PERA before the end of this year.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.”
Read the Alliance’s written remarks submitted for this hearing.