[Ip-health] Bloomberg- Harvard Among Six Schools Urging Drug Access for Poor (Update1)

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Harvard Among Six Schools Urging Drug Access for Poor (Update1)

By John Lauerman

Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Harvard University and Yale University are among
six schools pledging to encourage companies to give poor countries
better access to drugs and medical products stemming from discoveries
made on their campuses.

Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Yale in New Haven, Connecticut;
Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island; the University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia; Oregon Health & Science University in
Portland; and Boston University in Boston will release a statement today
that will guide how drugs developed by scientists at the schools are
licensed to companies, said Kevin Casey, a spokesman for Harvard.
Representatives from the six institutions signed the statement after
campus groups pushed for policies to make new treatments available at
low cost to poor patients.

The statement commits the schools to make "vigorous efforts" to promote
global access to drugs through licensing strategies. The six said they
will work to include provisions that call for lower prices for drugs to
treat AIDS and other diseases that afflict poor countries. The precedent
for such collaboration dates to 2002, when Yale and New York-based
drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. agreed to permit generic production
of the AIDS treatment Zerit in South Africa.

"We believe the principles and strategies enunciated in this document
will further our shared goal of providing access to the benefits of our
medical inventions for the most needy global citizens," said Yale
President Richard C. Levin
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Richard+C.+Levin&site=wnews&client
=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=
p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1> , 62, in a statement.

Academic Innovation

Academic researchers' findings provide the technological basis for
innovation for almost every biotechnology company, said John Maraganore
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=John+Maraganore&site=wnews&client=
wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p
&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1> , chief executive officer of Alnylam
Pharmaceuticals Inc
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=ALNY%3AUS> . in Cambridge.
Prescription drug sales in the U.S. were $291 billion in 2008, according
to IMS Health Inc. in Norwalk, Connecticut. Maraganore said he hadn't
known the statement was being developed.

"I'm concerned about this type of action taking place unilaterally for a
major source of inventions for the world," Maraganore said. "I think
it's very important to have a dialogue to get this right."

School officials want to craft guidelines that encourage drug access for
poor nations without dissuading companies from working with university
scientists, said Maryanne Fenerjian, Harvard's director of
technology-transfer policy.

Lower Royalties

The schools will also use strategies such as decreasing royalty rates to
persuade companies to charge less or allow low- cost generic production
of new drugs for poor patients, she said. Techniques cited in the
document have already been used by Harvard to help promote access to
medicines, Fenerjian said.

"We agree that it's important that our intellectual property doesn't
serve as a barrier -- and in some cases should be used as leverage -- to
help ensure that drugs, vaccines and other technologies reach the
developing world," Fenerjian said in an interview. "But there is no
single solution. Every technology is different and every licensee's
capabilities and sensitivities are different."

An international student group called Universities Allied for Essential
Medicines <http://www.essentialmedicine.org/> , supported by the New
York-based Ford Foundation, has been asking schools for about seven
years to help broaden access to drugs.

Harvard's chapter of Essential Medicines held demonstrations on campus
in September to urge increased drug access. Supporters erected giant
pill bottles on campus, wore "Say Yes to Drugs" T-shirts and held a
fund-raising dance, said Jillian Irwin, a member of the group.

Student Petition

The protesters collected more than 1,000 signatures petitioning Harvard
to adopt a licensing policy that would increase access in poor nations.
Harvard students also met with Provost Steven Hyman
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Steven+Hyman&site=wnews&client=wne
ws&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&ge
tfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>  and Harvard School of Public Health
Dean Julio Frenk earlier this year to press the issue, Irwin said.

Harvard hired Chief Technology Development Officer Isaac Kohlberg
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Isaac%0AKohlberg&site=wnews&client
=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=
p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>  away from New York University four
years ago and began expanding the Office of Technology Development to
put more campus research to use. The school is trying to raise revenue
from new sources after its endowment lost about a third of its value
last year, said Michael Smith
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Michael+Smith&site=wnews&client=wn
ews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&g
etfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1> , dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and
Sciences, the school's biggest division, in a speech in September.

MIT's Licensing

Kohlberg is trying to catch up with the licensing success of other
schools, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also in
Cambridge. MIT granted 67 licenses in the fiscal year ended June 30, and
got $66.3 million in royalty income, according to the school's Web site.
In the same year, Harvard sold 36 licenses
<http://www.techtransfer.harvard.edu/mediacenter/annuals/stats/> ,
raising $12.4 million. In fiscal 2008, Harvard sold 26 licenses and
received $21.1 million.

Harvard has already used its contract power to push for increased drug
access, Fenerjian said. When the school licensed a tuberculosis vaccine
technology in 2007 to Morningside Group, a Hong Kong-based licensee, the
company agreed to sell vaccine produced with the approach at affordable
prices in developing countries.

Harvard's licensing officials have been meeting with students for as
long as four years to discuss drug access, Harvard's Casey said. Their
involvement, which has become more intense this year, has been
"helpful," he said.

"There's been a convergence of interest," Casey said. "The students have
constructively engaged in an area that happens to align with one that
the administration at the provost level and below has been concerned
about."

Students at the 373-year-old school have scrutinized relationships
between Harvard faculty members and industry. Earlier this year,
students at Harvard Medical School pushed to require professors to
reveal their financial ties to companies before lecturing.

Increased Pressure

Irwin, from the Harvard chapter of Essential Medicines, said the group
stepped up pressure on the licensing issue after a February speech by
Andrew Witty
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Andrew+Witty&site=wnews&client=wne
ws&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&ge
tfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1> , chief executive officer of
London-based GlaxoSmithKline Plc,
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=GSK%3ALN>  the world's No. 2
drugmaker. Witty said the company would cut prices in the 50 poorest
countries, and share patents on technologies that might address health
problems in impoverished nations.

Alnylam has licensed a drugmaking technology called RNA interference
that stops individual genes from making proteins involved in cancer,
nerve disorders and lung infections. The company has agreed, along with
Glaxo, to share intellectual property, Maraganore said.

"It's very appropriate to promote mechanisms whereby medicines become
more available in parts of the world where they're needed," Maraganore
said. "At the same time, it's critical to preserve the incentives to
discover those medicines in the first place."

Concrete Policy

Since the June meeting, members of Essential Medicines haven't been
invited to participate in the discussions, according to Irwin. Students
haven't seen a draft of the guidelines and don't know whether they are
strong enough to make a difference, she said.

"We're asking for a concrete policy," said Irwin, a junior at Harvard
who majors in social and cognitive neuroscience. "We want to know the
provisions that will be included in different types of licenses, and how
this policy will be incorporated into them."

Schools can't guarantee that access-promoting provisions will be
incorporated into every license deal, said Harvard's Fenerjian. Schools
don't always have the bargaining power to include such clauses in their
agreements with companies, which often pay hundreds of millions of
dollars to develop new drugs and are selective in choosing the ones to
license, she said.

More schools will be invited to accept the guidelines, Fenerjian said.

"A number of institutions have been willing to be tough and creative on
these issues," Fenerjian said. "Until now, we haven't had a statement
that says this is what we see as our goal, this is what we see as our
new norm."



http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602085&sid=afGqEWU3fKPM