Enabling equitable and affordable access to novel therapeutics for pandemic preparedness and response via creative intellectual property agreements

by Griffen EJ, Boulet P, ASAP Discovery Center and COVID Moonshot. Wellcome Open Research 2024, 9:374.

Summary: Drug discovery and development organizations usually recoup their investment using patents, giving them a time-limited monopoly on the manufacture, sale or licensing of their drug, which can create distortions in access. Using an ‘Open Science’ approach, R&D organizations publish all the information about a prospective drug, enabling anyone to make and sell it and leaving the R&D organizations with no control over price or distribution. Neither model is adequate, especially during a pandemic. The authors of this manuscript share an alternative model that prioritizes fair and affordable pricing by creating ‘maximally permissive licenses’ based on ‘minimally defensive patents’, with an example of the approach used by the ASAP Center.

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