Pfizer Lookout For A Partner For Drug Manufacturing

intellectual property through an agreement with the UN’s medicines patent pool (MPP). The goal was simple and this was to provide with the drug in low- and middle-income countries. Such licensing will allow medicine patent pool to sub-license qualified generic medicines manufacturers worldwide. This will result in the supply of antiviral drug to those countries covered in the agreement and even to those where there are no patents. This also includes India, where the local manufacturers can secure sub-license for the purpose of manufacture and supply the drug. There are companies who are in the process of applying for manufacturing license.

Not only to this, Pfizer have decided for not receiving any royalties on sales in low-income countries and even waiving royalties for countries which are covered under agreement which are almost 95 low- and middle-income countries. Such factors will remain as Covid-19 remains classified as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization.

"We believe the MPP model represents an efficient way to work within the current innovation ecosystem to hopefully achieve broader and faster access, particularly for small molecules, where the MPP model has already been proven successful," Pfizer spokesperson said.

Author: Saransh Chaturvedi (Advocate, LLM (IIT Kharagpur)-an associate at IIPRD,  in case of any queries please contact/write back to us via email saransh@iiprd.com