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Managing intellectual property to develop medicines for the world's poorest

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery volume 16, pages 223–224 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

It has been argued that patents impede the development and access of medicines for tropical diseases such as malaria. However, we believe that intellectual property can be a key tool to enable timely progression of drug development projects involving multiple partners and to ensure equitable access to successful products.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Jeremy N. Burrows and Anya Ramalho for helpful discussions, Andrea Lucard for the relay analogy and Rob Hooft van Huijsduijnen for editing the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Medicines for Malaria Venture, 20 route des Pre-Bois, Geneva, 1215, Switzerland

    Sylvie Fonteilles-Drabek, David Reddy & Timothy N. C. Wells

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  1. Sylvie Fonteilles-Drabek
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  2. David Reddy
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  3. Timothy N. C. Wells
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Correspondence to Sylvie Fonteilles-Drabek or Timothy N. C. Wells.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Fonteilles-Drabek, S., Reddy, D. & Wells, T. Managing intellectual property to develop medicines for the world's poorest. Nat Rev Drug Discov 16, 223–224 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd.2017.24

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