[Ip-health] GlaxoSmithKline agrees royalty-free licensing deal for HIV drug

[Judit Rius Sanjuan]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/14/glaxosmithkline-aspen-hiv-dr=
ug-license

GlaxoSmithKline agrees royalty-free licensing deal for HIV drug

=95 Aspen to manufacture cheaper generic version of abacavir
=95 Deal comes as MPs call for a 'patent pool' for HIV drugs

By Julia Kollewe
Tuesday 14 July 2009 16.42 BST

GlaxoSmithKline has granted South Africa's Aspen the right to make its
HIV drug abacavir in a royalty-free licensing deal, on the day that a
group of MPs called on manufacturers to put their HIV medicines in a
"patent pool" to reduce prices.

Aspen will manufacture a cheaper, generic version of abacavir, also
known as Ziagen. The deal was announced by GSK chief executive Andrew
Witty on a visit to Kenya today and forms part of the company's
efforts to cut the cost of anti-retroviral medicines for HIV in poorer
countries.

The world's second-largest drugmaker also announced a new =A350m fund to
support non-governmental organisations working with pregnant women to
prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. A further =A310m will go to
support public-private partnership work in developing Aids medicines
for children.

While welcoming the initiatives, MPs and campaigners said GSK, and
other pharmaceutical companies, must do more. David Borrow, who chairs
the all-party parliamentary group on Aids, said: "GSK is taking
positive steps, but they are broadly unilateral, which will limit
their impact. We would like to see them sign up to the Unitaid patent
pool, a proposal which the Department for International Development
and all the major UK charities, like Oxfam, support."

Unitaid is the leading international organisation pushing for a patent
pool that would allow generic firms to produce HIV medicines cheaply
for developing countries.

Borrow stressed the importance of reducing the price of second-line
treatments, a combination of new drugs given to patients who have
become resistant to the drugs initially administered to them. Second-
line treatments cost seven times as much as first-line drugs.

"The most effective way to reduce prices would be a patent pool
approach, rather than individual deals between companies," said Borrow.

The parliamentary group on Aids today published a report entitled The
Treatment Timebomb, which said that by 2030 more than 50 million
people will need HIV treatment compared to just 9 million today.

While GSK took the lead in February, announcing it would place many
drug patents for tropical diseases into a free pool, Witty rejected
calls for the inclusion of HIV drugs. "The patent pool on neglected
diseases was because there was really no research going on in that
area =96 HIV is not a neglected disease," he said. "I can't see how a
patent pool in this particular area would change things dramatically."

Dr Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director of M=E9decins Sans Fronti=E8res'
Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, said: "Some have been
quite positive about it. It's a bit difficult to see why GSK is
hesitating on this."

So far Glaxo is the only major drugmaker that has committed to pool
some patents, although it was joined in the initiative last week by US
biotech Alnylam Pharmaceuticals.


Judit Rius Sanjuan
Attorney
Knowledge Ecology International / Essential Information
www.keionline.org / www.cptech.org
Phone: +1.202 332 2670, ext 18