US President Trump today declared in a White House speech his intent to "take steps" to lower drug prices by stopping "gaming of regulatory and patent processes by drug makers to unfairly protect monopolies," as well as increasing price transparency and promoting biosimilars and generics. But to do this, his administration will take on what it sees as "freeloading" on US innovation by foreign governments, and addressing "unfair" intellectual property and market access policies in trade agreements. Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization celebrated its 70th anniversary last month. Since the inception of the organisation, the world has changed, and so have its challenges. The global rise of non-communicable diseases is one example of those challenges, as well as the escalating prices of new medicines and chronic access issues in many countries. The annual World Health Assembly will open on 21 May with an ambitious new General Programme of Work for 2019-2023, which promises 1 billion more people under universal health coverage. Continue reading ->
Research collaborations between institutions in the North and institutions in the South often show a scientific and power imbalance. In the context of growing concerns about this issue, initiatives are being developed to increase fairness in research partnerships. In particular, the Research Fairness Initiative, providing a reporting system for institutions is gaining traction, according to speakers at the Geneva Health Forum this week. Continue reading ->
The Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) this week launched a campaign to ask the University of California to drop its pursuit of a patent on the prostrate cancer drug Xtandi in India in order to make it affordable for patients. Xtandi sells at "exorbitant" rates in the United States, they said, a seeming violation of the licensing guidelines of the publicly funded University of California system which guarantees an "appropriate" return on taxpayer investments. Continue reading ->
Nobel Prize winner Sir John Sulston passed away on 6 March at the age of 75, and was widely remembered in the press and scientific circles, celebrating his research, his wisdom, and his leadership of the landmark Human Genome Project. Intellectual Property Watch recalls his visionary warning and advice a decade ago about the intellectual property system, investment, and science that is still valuable today. Continue reading ->
Pharmaceutical R&D constantly leads to the generation of new intellectual property (IP), from clinical trial data to libraries of promising compounds. Not all IP assets generated by a company are used in their future R&D. When this happens, companies can choose instead to share them with other third-party researchers, under licensing agreements. The Access to Medicine Foundation has worked with BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH) to develop a framework for identifying which IP assets are most difficult for companies to share, yet most likely to speed up R&D of the medicines and vaccines needed by people living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), write Clarke B. Cole and Katie Graef. Continue reading ->