Gilead Agrees to Allow Generic Version of Groundbreaking H.I.V. Shot in Poor Countries; The New York Times, October 2, 2024

Stephanie Nolen , The New York Times; Gilead Agrees to Allow Generic Version of Groundbreaking H.I.V. Shot in Poor Countries

"The drugmaker Gilead Sciences on Wednesday announced a plan to allow six generic pharmaceutical companies in Asia and North Africa to make and sell at a lower price its groundbreaking drug lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injection that provides near-total protection from infection with H.I.V.

Those companies will be permitted to sell the drug in 120 countries, including all the countries with the highest rates of H.I.V., which are in sub-Saharan Africa. Gilead will not charge the generic drugmakers for the licenses.

Gilead says the deal, made just weeks after clinical trial results showed how well the drug works, will provide rapid and broad access to a medication that has the potential to end the decades-long H.I.V. pandemic.

But the deal leaves out most middle- and high-income countries — including Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, China and Russia — that together account for about 20 percent of new H.I.V. infections. Gilead will sell its version of the drug in those countries at higher prices. The omission reflects a widening gulf in health care access that is increasingly isolating the people in the middle."

How the intellectual property monopoly has impeded an effective response to Covid-19; The Conversation, February 14, 2022

Salam Alshareef; The Conversation ; How the intellectual property monopoly has impeded an effective response to Covid-19

"As of October 2021, only 0.7% of all manufactured vaccine doses had gone to low-income countries. Manufacturers had delivered 47 times as many doses to high-income countries as they had to low-income countries.

Since its inception, COVAX, the UN-backed initiative dedicated to promoting access to Covid vaccines, has struggled to obtain doses. It recently passed the 1 billion doses delivered – half way to its goal of delivering 2 billion doses by the end of 2021. Indeed, AstraZeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson have delivered between 0% and 39% of their already inadequate commitments to COVAX in 2021.

The Global Commission for Post-Pandemic Policy, meanwhile, estimates that while Asia and Europe will be able to fully vaccinate 80% of their populations by March 2022 and North America by May 2022, Africa will not reach 80% at current rates until April 2025."

Texas scientists’ new Covid-19 vaccine is cheaper, easier to make and patent-free; The Guardian, January 15, 2022

Erum Salam , The Guardian; Texas scientists’ new Covid-19 vaccine is cheaper, easier to make and patent-free

"Although more than 60 other vaccines are in development using the same technology, Bottazzi said their vaccine is unique because they do not intend to patent it, allowing anyone with the capacity to reproduce it...

“Pretty much anybody that can make hepatitis B vaccines or has the capacity to produce microbial-based protein like bacteria or yeast, can replicate what we do,” Bottazzi said.

Patent wars over mRNA vaccines have recently heated up. Moderna and the National Institutes of Health are in a dispute over who should get credit for specific discoveries that led to a Covid-19 vaccine which has been delivered to more than 73 million Americans. If Moderna is found to have infringed on the federal government’s patent, it could be forced to pay more than $1bn.

At the same time, activists have called for Pfizer and Moderna to share the technology and knowhow for producing their vaccines, including taking the fight to the World Trade Organization."