TAG Encouraged by J&J Deal to Reduce Bedaquiline Prices, but Company’s Action Falls Short of Community Demands

We are heartened that this arrangement will likely reduce the cost of bedaquiline around the world. And we celebrate author John Green and his many followers for shining a light on this cause and campaigning with creativity and spirit to amplify the longstanding demands of TB survivors, communities, and civil society. Nonetheless, this deal falls short of the clearly articulated demands of communities affected by TB for patent non-enforcement or withdrawal. It is a creative procurement solution that will address the acute crisis in access to this lifesaving drug without solving the larger structural injustices that led to inequitable access to bedaquiline in the first place. Patent “evergreening” tactics like those deployed by J&J allow pharmaceutical companies to game an intellectual property regime in order to extend monopoly rights over publicly funded innovations. … While the deal between J&J and the STBP GDF will allow countries buying through GDF access to generics and lower prices, countries that don’t buy from the STBP GDF such South Africa and countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), where J&J licensed bedaquiline to Pharmstandard, the unjustified secondary patents are still in play and blocking access to generics.  A competitive tender through GDF might also lower the price of bedaquiline available in these places, many of which have high TB burdens. But it raises the question of why this is only now suddenly possible. As TAG TB Project Co-Directors Mike Frick and Lindsay McKenna demonstrated three years ago in PLOS ONE, public and philanthropic entities invested up to five times as much in bedaquiline R&D as J&J did.