Covid-19 vaccines: Combatting the crooked global pharmaceutical industry: Fighting Covid-19 requires fewer patents and more state – Piergiuseppe Fortunato

On March 17th 2020, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer officially partnered with Biopharmaceutical New Technologies (BioNTech), a spinoff of the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz. The partnership was to accelerate a potential first-in-class Covid-19 vaccine (BNT162), using not attenuated or deactivated virus but a strand of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) to produce, and engender immunity against, the virus’ spike protein.

On March 17th 2020, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer officially partnered with Biopharmaceutical New Technologies (BioNTech), a spinoff of the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz. The partnership was to accelerate a potential first-in-class Covid-19 vaccine (BNT162), using not attenuated or deactivated virus but a strand of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) to produce, and engender immunity against, the virus’ spike protein.

The vaccine was expected to enter clinical testing by the end of the following month. At that point, it had already been almost entirely developed by the small German immunotherapy company. What Pfizer brought to the alliance was essentially funds for the clinical trials and commercial capabilities.

Pfizer, along with the rest of the industry, has been lobbying to stop a temporary waiver of IPR, endorsed by the current US administration under Joe Biden, to allow generic Covid-19 vaccines to be distributed at low cost in the global south. Instead, the industry is asserting monopoly rights in all those developing economies that ratified the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which came into force back in 1995—even at the cost of delaying Covid-19 immunisation worldwide.

Patenting vaccines (and drugs) is particularly problematic, since public research irrigation is preponderant and large companies typically come into play only in the phase of clinical trials, right before patenting, usually when the resources to be invested exceed the financial capacities of small inventors. The pricing of the patented products, however, does not internalise the contribution by other actors, including public institutions, or public-health objectives (such as global immunisation in the case of Covid-19), since the IPR system has not been designed to do so. On the contrary, being subject to intense lobbying and regulatory capture by large companies, the system is often abused and high prices persist, granting to the privileged holders profits not justifiable by their contribution.

This is as socially inequitable as it is economically inefficient—its inadequacy dramatically exposed by the pandemic. Vaccines developed with substantial public contributions are generating hundreds of billions of dollars in sales for the pharmaceutical companies, while the coronavirus is still ravaging poorer nations which cannot afford immunisation.

The vaccine was expected to enter clinical testing by the end of the following month. At that point, it had already been almost entirely developed by the small German immunotherapy company. What Pfizer brought to the alliance was essentially funds for the clinical trials and commercial capabilities.

This is as socially inequitable as it is economically inefficient—its inadequacy dramatically exposed by the pandemic. Vaccines developed with substantial public contributions are generating hundreds of billions of dollars in sales for the pharmaceutical companies, while the coronavirus is still ravaging poorer nations which cannot afford immunisation.

Read the complete report at Fighting Covid-19 requires fewer patents and more state – Piergiuseppe Fortunato

Pharmaceutical Industry: Europe Fines Drug Companies for Delaying Generics - by James Kanter

Europe’s top antitrust enforcer continued a crackdown on drug company efforts to keep low-cost generic versions of their medicines off the market, a campaign that is taking place on both sides of the Atlantic.

On Wednesday, the European Commission fined a Danish pharmaceutical company and a number of generic producers a total of 146 million euros, or $195 million. 

The commission said that Lundbeck of Denmark colluded with companies like Ranbaxy of India and Merck of Germany in 2002 and 2003 to delay market entry of a less expensive generic version of a blockbuster antidepressant called citalopram. Joaquín Almunia, the European commissioner for competition, said that Lundbeck also destroyed significant quantities of the low-cost version of the drug.

Read more: Europe Fines Drug Companies for Delaying Generics - NYTimes.com

Generic Drugs exports from Brazil and India opposed by established US and EU drug companies

When Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker, acquired 40 percent of Brazilian generic pharmaceutical firm Laboratorio Teuto Brasileiro in October last year, it wasn't a big surprise for industry watchers. Pfizer isn't the only pharma giant with an eye on Brazil's US$26 billion pharmaceuticals industry and its small but growing niche in generic drugs. A year earlier, French pharma firm Sanofi-Aventis bought Medley, Brazil's leading generics brand with annual sales of around US$286 million, in a US$679 million deal.

Other such deals could be on the way, predict some experts. "The big pharma companies worldwide are struggling with an absence of big blockbuster drug discoveries. They are losing revenue and cutting research," says Odinir Finotti, president of Pró Genericos, a Brazilian trade association representing 95 generic pharmaceutical firms. "So part of their strategy has been to buy generic drug companies, because that is where a lot of the growth is coming from."

Growth, indeed: In Brazil, sales last year of generic drugs -- which are nearly identical reproductions of off-patent medications and are distributed without patent protection -- increased 53 percent from the previous year, to around US$3.5 billion, according to Pró Genericos. Overall, Brazil sold more than 330 million units in 2010, up from roughly 233 million units of generic drugs in 2007.

According to a Bloomberg report, brand-name pharmaceutical companies like Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis and Eli Lilly were unhappy with growing generic drugs exports from both Brazil and India and began alerting EU customs officials about shipments of drugs from those countries that are suspected of intellectual property infringement. But after roughly 17 seizures at EU borders of Indian-made generic drug medications over the course of a year, the two emerging markets cried foul.
 
For more: Latin Business Chronicle – Latin American Business News and Intelligence