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 ->
Some products are too cheap, generic drug companies do not invest in them because they do not make enough money out of them. Others seem astronomically expensive, and are said to include the costs of all research, successes and failures alike. Panellists at a recent Swiss-organised expert event in Bern concurred that something must done about pricing, and explored some surprising ways to do it. Continue reading ->
The current innovation system has yielded many important innovations and extended human life, nobody disputes this. But what about the cases where it hasn’t and a problem persists? A panel of health experts organised recently by the Swiss government and including representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, the World Health Organization, academia, and a research institution held an unusually open and positive discussion that sought to get underneath the issue. Continue reading ->
A recent panel of health experts gathered at the hallowed Swiss Intellectual Property Institute in Bern (which counts Albert Einstein among its alumni) tackled some of the toughest questions facing global health policymakers with an eye toward actually solving them and not just restating polarised positions. One of the ideas discussed at the event was how priorities for diseases and research are handled at the global level. Continue reading ->
BERN, Switzerland -- What if reaching the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals on access to health for all depended on the willingness of all actors to see beyond outdated dichotomies? The concept may seem obvious, but is easier described than done. In an effort to break silos, the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI) brought together stakeholders of all sides last week to discuss how to harness political and economic will to achieve innovation leading to new medicines that are available and affordable for all in need. Continue reading ->