Medicines Patent Pool licences for every patented cancer drug on the WHO list
Companies can license their patents to generic makers for poorer countries through a UN-backed pool, as happened for HIV. Only one cancer drug has been licensed so far; the whole essential list should be.
The Medicines Patent Pool signed its first oncology licence in 2022 (Novartis, nilotinib) covering a limited set of countries. Several patented oncology medicines are on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines (and more will be added), including targeted therapies and checkpoint inhibitors, with generic and biosimilar manufacturers in India and China able to supply them. The proposal is a coordinated push, backed by the WHO and funders, for voluntary licences on all patented EML oncology medicines covering at least all low- and lower-middle-income countries, with technology transfer for biologics.
- Prices and value · New cancer drugs routinely cost over $150,000 a year, often for months of benefit. Systems cannot afford them and patients go bankrupt.
- Most of the world has almost no cancer care · Seven in ten cancer deaths happen in low- and middle-income countries, where radiotherapy, pathology, surgery and drugs are scarce.