The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) and a consortium of six major U.S. research universities have endorsed a global health initiative designed to speed access to affordable medicines in the developing world. The group has signed onto a plan that will insist licensees to university-created therapies, such as pharma companies, agree to help make those therapies more widely available in developing countries. By inking the “Statement of Principles and Strategies for the Equitable Dissemination of Medical Technologies,” Harvard, Yale, Brown, Boston, and Oregon Health & Science Universities and the University of Pennsylvania, together with AUTM, committed to “implementing technology transfer strategies that promote the availability of health-related technologies in developing countries for essential medical care.” The initiative takes a major step beyond “Nine Points to Consider in Licensing University Technology,” a 2007 statement endorsed by nearly six dozen research and academic institutions, and includes a Global Health Toolkit created by AUTM members. The toolkit allows TTOs to share information on structuring licenses that promote innovation and product development while encouraging access to essential medicines. The toolkit includes sample clauses taken from signed license agreements that include global access language acceptable to the licensees. AUTM plans to update the toolkit as TTOs gain experience and provide feedback on it, according to Arundeep S. Pradhan, associate vice president, technology transfer and business development, at Oregon Health & Science University and president of AUTM.
The effort to hasten the development and dissemination of technologies and medications to ease the global health crisis began last spring when Harvard and Yale hosted a gathering of TTOs from a dozen U.S. research institutions. The daylong meeting and months of follow-up conference calls provided the framework for the document. The student group Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) also pushed for the effort. The consensus statement describes a number of strategies to facilitate generic production or below-market pricing and commits the universities to, among other things:
- make “vigorous efforts to develop creative and effective licensing strategies that help to promote global access to health related technologies;”
- ensure that IP “should not become a barrier to essential health-related technologies needed by patients in developing countries;”
- exert control over patent rights in such a way as to foster the availability of life-saving products in the developing world; and
- support the development of health-related technologies aimed at diseases that disproportionately burden individuals in the developing world — tuberculosis, AIDS, water-borne disease, tropical- and other region-specific ailments and parasitic infections — without regard for economic gain.
Officials at AUTM and the six schools wanted to craft guidelines that encourage drug access for poor nations without dissuading companies from working with university scientists, according to Maryanne Fenerjian, Harvard’s director of technology transfer policy. Participating schools will 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 says. Harvard has already used techniques cited in the toolkit to help promote access to medicines. When the university licensed a tuberculosis vaccine technology in 2007 to Hong Kong-based Morningside Group, the company agreed to sell the vaccine at affordable prices in developing countries. “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 says. “But there is no single solution. Every technology is different and every licensee’s capabilities and sensitivities are different.”
The six universities expect other private and public universities to adopt the principles once they are broadly disseminated. “A number of institutions have been willing to be tough and creative on these issues,” Fenerjian says. “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.” Universities can endorse the statement of principles at http://www.autm.net/endorse.
Sources: Yale University Office of Public Affairs and Bloomberg.com