In the first agreement between a pharmaceutical company and the new
international Medicines Patent Pool, Gilead Sciences announced Tuesday that it
would license four of its AIDS and hepatitis B drugs to the pool.
The move is particularly important because it includes tenofovir and
emtricitabine, which have emerged as important components of AIDS therapy and
new prophylaxis regimens, like vaginal microbicides for women and once-a-day
pills protecting gay men. Many poor countries now have only older drugs, some
of which have harsh side effects.
Health advocates have long championed the idea of a pool: an independent agency
that would hold patents on drugs and sub-license them to low-cost manufacturers
for low or no royalties on the condition that they supply only poor countries.
(In Uganda, above, cost cutting has set back anti-AIDS programs.)
The pool was created last year, but drugmakers resisted it, wanting to control
quality and protect rights to future profits from middle-income countries. Until
this week, the only participant was the National Institutes of Health, which
turned over a partial patent on an obscure AIDS drug.
`This is a great achievement,` said James P. Love, a
campaigner for lower drug prices who first proposed a pool in 2002. `The other
drug companies didn`t want Gilead to sign anything, and this will put pressure
on them.`
The pool must negotiate which countries can get
which drugs, and Mr. Love said he will watch that carefully. Gilead may
benefit, he noted, because it may now get modest royalties from sales in
countries where it never bothered to take out patents.