European patent office inventor awards for TB research highlights value of innovation
20.06.14
I have written before about the challenges posed by TB: In 2012 alone, we saw 8.6 million new cases and 1.3 million deaths, about 95% of them in developing countries. Though this week’s award for TB research – and the three new drugs recommended by the EMA in the past six months alone – are a significant achievement for our industry, research has to continue. TB is particularly tricky, and Multi-Drug-Resistant TB is adding a new threat.
The difficulties of TB research require the critical support of both collaborative initiatives and a strong IP system. These enable such research to fail and start over, again and again, and are thereby able to incentivise multi-year and multi-million projects for the benefit of patients worldwide. I know that the EFPIA member companies behind two of these new TB drugs are proactively engaged to provide access to as many patients as possible. For TB, the real access challenges are manyfold and include notably the length of treatment periods but above all, finding the patients – very often displaced people and people at the lowest social status. Overcoming these access issues is a challenge that needs to be discussed and understood separately from the IP which does just enable these drugs to exist.
The innovation incentivized and protected by IP not only supports social welfare, by allowing for new discoveries that improve the lives of everyday people, but also drives economic prosperity. EPO President, Benoît Battistelli, highlighted this fact, saying: “Innovation is absolutely essential for Europe to generate growth and prosperity and secure its position among the leading industrial regions”. I couldn’t agree more. This line of thinking is part of the motivation behind EFPIA’s recently launched “Health & Growth” Strategy Paper, which outlines steps towards an integrated strategy for the life sciences sector in Europe.
Life sciences are driven by innovation – and if we protect that innovation appropriately, we will see a pay-off. We will see it in the new medicines we are able to develop to address current areas of unmet need. We will see it in the economic benefits that come with strong innovative success – for instance, in the creation of skilled labour that will help reverse Europe’s “brain drain”. And we will see it in the wellbeing of patients, who benefit from innovative medicines.
So today, I am proud to congratulate the team behind this new TB drug, which the EPO distinguished with the European Inventor Award in the “Industry” category. If we continue to support innovative thinkers like these – and to foster an environment supportive of innovation in the EU – we will all benefit, in many ways.
