New ways of business in the medicines industry?

Posted on 18 May 2009

Change is happening in the medicines industry with research and development companies and organisations making moves towards more ethical and innovative business practice. Can this lead to better access to medicines for poor people? Some new developments in the industry indicate steps in the right direction.

A new way of working is being pioneered for the first time in the UK by Edinburgh University. The University is working to help to make essential medicines more accessible to people in the developing world by embracing a humanitarian agenda for the licensing of its medical research. It aims to make medicine more affordable to people in developing countries through a new policy to develop medicines by universities staff at-cost.

The University has worked with students from the Universities Allied for Essential Medicines(UAEM) campaign to develop the new initiative. "We want to ensure every health-related innovation developed in campus laboratories is made available in the developing world at the lowest possible cost," Mori Mansouri, UK national coordinator for UAEM, said in a statement. The initiative is also supported by the Gates Foundation, the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative and the Department for International Development. Read the full story here

This innovation in research and development follows closely the new approach that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is promoting. GSK the world’s second largest maker of medicines, announced recently that it will share more than 800 drug patents with others hunting new cures for neglected tropical diseases. GSK also announced it was cutting the cost of 110 patented medicines, for a range of conditions from malaria to asthma, by an average of 45 per cent from next week. The creation of a free patent pool to spark development of new medicines for tropical diseases takes things a step further, though Glaxo has stopped short of offering up its patents on drugs for HIV and AIDS, which it does not consider to be a neglected disease. So far, Glaxo is the only big drug company to have made a commitment to pool its intellectual property in this way, but Chief Executive, Andrew Witty, hopes others will follow suit. GSK will place more than 500 granted patents and about 300 patent applications -- together relating to 80 different therapeutic approaches -- in the new patent pool.

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