For those of you who could not make it to the meeting on Thursday, here are some of the salient points that we covered.
- The impact of unequal access
An estimated 10 million people died in 2005 due to lack of access to medicines for which treatment exists
- The role of universities in drug development
Universities are a major contributor to biomedical research and drug development (e.g., Univ. of Wisconsin and warfarin); UAEM believes that as publicly funded institution they have a social responsibility to ensure that the products of their discoveries go towards helping those who need them. Most universities do not have the means to complete the full process of drug development and marketing (i.e., clinical trials and such), so they typically license out the later stages of drug development to pharmaceutical companies. When a university researcher makes a patentable discovery, the Technology Transfer Office (TTO) has the choice to take over the patent and sell/license it to outside companies that can implement the later stages of development, or to let the researcher retain the rights, in which case the patent holder must independently find partners who can further develop and market the discovery.
- The pharma side of things
There is concern about decrease in innovation but revenue loss from generic access in developing countries would be minor as these markets represent ~3% of revenues.
- What students and universities can do
Examples of previous successful actions include Yale students and researchers negotiating a decrease in the price of the antiretroviral d4T; MIT is to put patents from NTD research in a patent pool. Thus far, nearly 2 dozen institutions (including NIH) have endorsed a Statement of Principles and Strategies for the Equitable Dissemination of Medical Technologies. Although this statement is non-binding, it is a first step in reaching a critical mass of institutions that support equitable access. The more institutions sign on, the less “risk” there is that those who sign on will lose out on licensing contracts from pharma companies that do not want to be subjected to global access requirements.
The Hopkins TTO argues that Hopkins does not need a global access licensing policy as few drug discoveries come out of JHU and so they could be dealt with on a case-by-case basis but UAEM thinks that we need to have a policy in place to ensure global access for any future discoveries. The TTO should also provide support for researchers who expressly seek global access for their discoveries, which it did not do in the case of Stuart Grossman, who developed a subcutaneous implant for the delivery of opioids. Current problems that researcher are facing is that some funders like the Gates Foundation require grantees to have a plan for global access to the products of their discoveries but there is very little guidance on how to develop such a plan.
To read more, see this article from the Hopkins Newsletter about a recent UAEM protest and the university’s response.
Do you think that Hopkins should do more to ensure global access to the products of discoveries that are made here? What do you think that we can do realistically as students? How can we balance concerns for global access and maintain incentive for innovation, especially for “neglected diseases”? How do we even promote NTD research given that these diseases affect almost exclusively the poorest of the poor?
