Geneva – The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) released its 2017 prioritisation report today selecting five HIV and two hepatitis C compounds for potential licensing agreements. The annual medicines priority report, traditionally reviewing MPP’s target list for HIV, this year expands to important treatments for the hepatitis C virus (HCV). The list of HIV medicines includes investigational drugs that can potentially be important in the future: bictegravir, cabotegravir, doravirine, fostemsavir and rilpivirine.

The HCV prioritisation focuses on regimens, rather than on individual direct-acting antivirals, and includes investigational drugs glecaprevir/pibrentasvir and ravidasvir (with sofosbuvir) as key priorities for the foundation.

The report notes that given the rapid development of HCV regimens, MPP will actively monitor additional HCV treatments with the potential to work across all six major genotypes of the virus that are currently in phase 2 clinical development.

MPP’s evaluation methodology, developed in collaboration with a broad range of experts, selects medicines for in-licensing based on four sets of criteria:

  1. clinical importance of the candidate medicines;
  2. intellectual property and the extent to which medicines are patented in developing countries;
  3. existing licensing agreements in place; and
  4. potential for market uptake. The MPP prioritizes HIV and hepatitis C medicines that are either already on the market, but have not yet been licensed widely, or are in late-stage clinical development. The analysis is repeated annually based on new clinical data for the medicines, information on intellectual property status and other relevant market information.

Access the report