About Medicines Patent Pool
- The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) has signed sub-licence agreements with the India-based companies Eugia, Hetero, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, and the Indonesian firm BrightGene.to make generic versions of the drug Nilotinib of the Switzerland-based pharmaceutical corporation Novartis.
- The drug is used for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukaemia, a type of blood cancer.
- These first sub-licence agreements that the MPP, a United Nations-backed group working towards increasing access to, and facilitating the development of, life-saving medicines for low- and middle-income countries, has signed for a cancer treatment drug are the result of a licence agreement signed between it and Novartis Pharma AG in October 2022 for their patented cancer medicine.
- Nilotinib is sold under the brand name Tasigna and marketed worldwide by Novartis.
- Information released by the MPP said the selected manufacturers can make generic versions of Nilotinib in India and seven middle-income countries.
- They can also supply it in 44 territories included in the licence through a non-exclusive licence agreement, subject to local regulatory authorities.
- The licence allows developing and supplying generic versions of Nilotinib in seven middle-income countries.