Following the release of PhRMA’s Special 301 Report urging the Office of the US Trade Representative to better protect American pharma companies’ intellectual property in foreign countries, BIO has released its own report this week, with an eye toward compulsory licensing and regulatory data protection. Similar to PhRMA, BIO singles out Malaysia as a “Priority Foreign Country” following the issuance of a compulsory license in 2017 to make generic versions of Gilead’s he...

Late last month, Malaysia's government issued a compulsory license in an effort to offer a less-expensive version of Gilead's hepatitis C drug and increase access. Reports of the government move in Malaysia coincided with Gilead's decision on 24 August to extend its voluntary licenses on its hepatitis C medicines to include Malaysia, Ukraine and Belarus. Previously, the company signed agreements with 11 India-based manufacturers to make generics of its hepati...

Welcome to our Asia Regulatory Roundup, our weekly overview of the top regulatory news in Asia. CFDA Posts Comprehensive Technical Guidance on Clinical Trials China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) has released technical guidance on clinical trials, walking drug developers through the entire clinical research process, from preparing to run a first-in-human trial to designing post-marketing and pharmacogenomic studies. CFDA has created the document to provide ...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Monday officially amended its Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement to allow developing countries facing public health problems and lacking the capacity to produce generic drugs the ability to obtain such medicines from third country producers under "compulsory licensing" arrangements.  The amendment, which is the first since TRIPS was created in 1995, provides a permanent legal basis for both poten...

Welcome to our Asia Regulatory Roundup, our weekly overview of the top regulatory news in Asia. India Adopts Risk-Based Approach to Biologic Licenses, Ending Mandatory Inspections The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) has scrapped the need for manufacturers to undergo a joint inspection before receiving certain biologics licenses. Instead of conducting pre-approval visits, Indian regulators will award Form 29 licenses within three days of receiving applications ...

The United Nations (UN) High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines released its long-awaited report on Wednesday, with recommendations sure to rile up the pharmaceutical industry as it calls for World Trade Organization (WTO) members to no longer link the cost of research and development (R&D) with drug prices, as well as for an increase in the issuance of compulsory licenses and to require the disclosure of pharmaceutical R&D costs. The call for more compulsory license...

It’s well-known that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) offers billions of dollars in grants to US academic research facilities. What’s less well-known is that each year, hundreds of new inventions are produced in the laboratories of NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and these inventions are licensed out to private companies in the US and internationally for further research and development, with the...

Welcome to our Asia Regulatory Roundup, our weekly overview of the top regulatory news in Asia. CFDA Introduces Draft Clinical Trial Data Verification Procedures The China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) has released a provisional document regarding the validation of clinical trial data. Under the model, CFDA’s audit team will conduct on-site assessments of the records kept by clinical trials to verify the authenticity and integrity of data purporting to show the ...

An Indian manufacturer has filed the third-ever compulsory license application in India for AstraZeneca's type II diabetes drug saxagliptin, SpicyIP reports. Background Compulsory licensing is a legal provision that allows for the licensing of intellectual property rights without the rights holder's consent. The power to grant these licenses is seen by some countries, especially low- and middle-income ones, as a powerful tool to ensure important drugs are available a...

After being questioned by a member of the European Parliament, the European Commission (EC) says neither it nor the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have the power to acquire patents or issue a compulsory license. Background In the past two years, drugmakers have launched several drugs to treat hepatitis C (HCV), a disease which left untreated can lead to cirrhosis or liver cancer. The new generation of HCV treatments, led by Gilead's Sovaldi and Harvoni, are highly eff...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is conducting its sixth review of India's trade policies this week. To coincide with the review, the WTO Secretariat has released a report on India's trade and related policies, which highlights areas of many areas of progress, while noting some areas of concern related to India's policies on drug patents. Background The WTO routinely reviews its members' trade-related policies in order to track developments that may affect global ...

A US-based trade group wants to see the United States Trade Representative (USTR) pursue stricter limits on the ability of countries to bypass patent protection. In its Special 301 Submission 2015 , the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) argues that compulsory licenses should only be issued in “exceptional situations,” where there is a pressing public health need. What is a Compulsory License? Compulsory licensing (CL) is a legal provisi...