CEO @IMAKglobal. Renegade IP lawyer. Critically rethinking IP laws through neocolonial/neoliberal systems of power, and that empty word “innovation”. #YNWA ⚽️🎾
Dec 21, 2021 • 21 tweets • 13 min read
Another year of Covid. Another season without vaccine equity. Omicron, & whatever comes next, are the utterly predictable results of a lethal brew of racist/colonial structures and market-driven global health.
A year-in-review thread 🧵 (1/21):
In Nov 2020, before vaccines were even publicly available, the free market zealots at @WSJopinion were freaking out about countries in the Global South stealing IP rights for technologies that were supposedly too complex for them to make. wsj.com/articles/a-glo…
Nov 6, 2021 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
Next time you are thinking of using the word "innovation" in relation to the pharmaceutical industry or the patent system, or are involved in a debate about how reforming the patent system or negotiating drug prices will harm "innovation", think of this:
May 10, 2021 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Moderna's CEO on why he doesn't think waiving IP will increase mRNA vaccine supply: “If someone wants to start from scratch, they would have to figure out how to make mRNA, which is not in our patents.”
Right there, in black and white, are a few very important things. (1/10)
1. It confirms that Moderna’s statement in Oct 2020 about waiving patents was just PR stunt.
They deliberately left out the tech transfer part, and are saying here that the patents they would release wouldn’t be helpful anyways.
“It will unleash a scramble for the critical inputs we require in order to make a safe and effective vaccine.”
Nov 23, 2020 • 13 tweets • 6 min read
This @WSJ Editorial Board piece, which has the jingoism of Rudyard Kipling's writings, deserves a fuller response. But in this thread I'm going to focus on one particular sentence in the opinion to help enlighten the thinking of our 'friends' at the @WSJ. on.wsj.com/2IZPlFC
That sentence is:
"It’s not clear developing countries even have the ability to manufacture large-scale, complex technologies like Moderna’s mRNA vaccine or Eli Lilly’s monoclonal antibody cocktail—let alone distribute them."
Sep 30, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Despite what the CEO of Celgene/BMS has said in this hearing, it's important to note that even though Natco will enter with a generic version of Revlimid in 2022 it will be a very restricted amount.
The settlement between Natco/Celgene prevents Natco from fully coming to market until 2026. Other generics are still in litigation with Celgene BMS because of all the "important patent innovations" that Celegene piled up.
Sep 30, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The House Oversight Committee’s report on Celgene just dropped is a bombshell.
Internal strategy docs reviewed by Congress show that Celgene/BMS prioritised preventing “generic encroachment” and excluded competition by leveraging the U.S. patent system. oversight.house.gov/sites/democrat…
The report uses @IMAKglobal’s research to break down the details of Celgene/BMS’s patent abuse.
What is new are the insights we can take from the internal documents. Celgene knew the U.S. patent system could be manipulated, and they knew it gave them pricing control.
Sep 29, 2020 • 14 tweets • 2 min read
Thread (1/14): Tomorrow, drugmakers will be testifying on the tactics the industry uses to prop up drug prices.
Let’s take a look at the story of a poster child of patent abuse: Celgene’s cancer drug Revlimid.
Currently, the list price for a 1-month supply of Revlimid is a staggering $22,314.
Revlimid is Celgene’s blockbuster moneymaker. In 2017, it brought in $8.1 billion — or 63% — of Celgene's revenue.
But, the real story of Revlimid starts back in the 1950s.
Aug 6, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Everyone in the #access2meds movement should see last week's tech hearings as a beacon. Monopolies have metastasized throughout our society thanks to a 40+ year economic agenda that has defined progress as giving power to a few. (1/5)
The hearings focused solely on tech, but just a peek at #pharma and one will quickly see the industry has all of the trappings of a monopolist’s candy store: widespread consolidation, the protections for perennial price increases, and most importantly...
Jul 27, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The U.S. govt signed a $2B deal to secure 100M doses of Pfizer’s #COVID19 vaccine candidate. This deal is extremely troubling and I’ll tell you why...
At the end of the day, our market-based drug dev system is built around the requirement to deliver shareholder value and profit. Despite what their PR teams tell us, drugmakers are not intrinsically motivated to ensure equitable access to a vaccine.
Jun 30, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Like their request for orphan drug status, just can't help but make a stink by charging $3,120 for remdesivir.
To add insult to injury, CEO Daniel O’Day says, “I’ve never seen a disconnect between doing what’s right for patients and doing what’s right for investors”. Easy to say when your annual compensation is $16 million. bit.ly/2CLIwV4
May 22, 2020 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
I want to break down what I and others mean when we say that pharmaceutical companies did not properly prepare for #COVID19 despite previous warnings we could have a pandemic.
Did big pharma know COVID-19 was impending? Of course not.
But, there was a general consensus that previous coronavirus outbreaks like SARS and MERS could become global disasters. See this @nytimes article for more. nytimes.com/2020/04/21/mag…
Mar 30, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Tocilizumab (Actemra) by Genentech/Roche is an immunosuppressive drug for rheumatoid/systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis and has been given FDA approval for Phase 3 trails for #COVID-19.Reports from Italy and China suggest Actemra has shown some success.bit.ly/2yc8MWn
Key patents protecting Genentech/Roche's monopoly on Actemra are: Int Pub No. WO2002080969
Granted: Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, N.Zealand, Poland, Russia, S.Korea, US (7955598/9255145).
EU (1374900/1972638/22988812 - refused/withdrawn). Expected expiry 2022/3
Mar 5, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
"Analysts at RBC Capital Markets expect Gilead would price [remdesivir] at around $900 to $1,000 or lower per course, a cost above oral flu drugs but below new intravenous antibiotics." bit.ly/32UKV9d
If remdesivir does get approved to treat coronavirus, we should learn lessons from the 2005 avian flu crisis when countries were scrambling to assess the patent situation and whether they needed to issue a compulsory license. Here are some of the key patents for remdesivir:
Dec 6, 2019 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" (1985) predicted this when reality T.V began to take hold. But it is the Foreword to the book, comparing 1984 (Orwell) and Brave New World (Huxley) that is really prescient and worth noting (cont'd): bit.ly/2PkA8yx
"We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
Oct 10, 2019 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
"After 10 years under the BPCIA, patents, in many cases scores of patents per product, are providing originators with years of additional exclusivity."bit.ly/2pZxl4N
"Every FDA-approved biosimilar has faced a patent challenge, and on average at least 80 patents have been either asserted or disclosed as potentially covering the biosimilar."
Aug 7, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
100% @VincentRK. A colleague Dr. Andrew Hill has shown that there are no significant differences in safety and efficacy of switching to TAF compared to unboosted TDF. Studies to date suggest it has not been demonstrated that TAF is safer than unboosted TDF bit.ly/31syr6L
Gilead will persuade public health officials, physicians and even patient groups to advocate for switching to TAF. And why wouldn't they when they can start the patent clock again and recapture the market with current patents on TAF set to expire in 2036.bit.ly/2YtWYLq
Aug 2, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Celgene to pay $117 million in antitrust settlements for REMS abuses and filing shady patent challenges to stem the flow of the active ingredient. Given U.S sales alone were $6.47 billion last year, sounds like a good business move.bit.ly/2MxuFon
Especially given the patent thicket Celgene has developed potentially allowing it to block multiple competitors entering the U.S market until at least 2026. Currently only Natco has a volume limited agreement to enter in 2022 turning to unlimited in 2026.bit.ly/2KhvT4s
Jul 27, 2019 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
During the Q&A #drugdevelopmentinnovation after my panel I was told to be careful about throwing shade on the obvious nature of some pharma patents and to learn from the expert declarations that are submitted in litigation. I highlighted many of these experts are not independent.
Eg: Prof Valentino Stella is considered one the leaders in prodrugs, a technique that's been around for at least 40 years. He has been used by Gilead Sciences to provide expert statements for a number of their drugs that use the prodrug technique e.g Viread and recently Sovaldi.
Jul 20, 2019 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
"America's patent system should reward innovation, not lawyering." Absolutely. But the elephant in the room that urgently needs tackling to solve this problem is "what is innovation" when it comes to deserving a patent under the patent system? bit.ly/2O41qvL
I keep hearing in discussions on how to tackle the #overpatenting/ patent abuse problem that "patents should only be granted for "real and meaningful innovation". What does that even mean?
