The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) has announced six new sub-licences with Aurobindo, Cipla, Emcure, Hetero Labs, Laurus Labs and Desano to allow generic manufacture of anti-AIDS drug tenofovir alafenamide (TAF). This follows MPP’s signing a licence with U.S. pharmaceutical major Gilead Sciences Inc. for the company’s TAF, which is a novel investigational medicine.
Gilead released positive results on two of its TAF Phase III studies which suggest that the medicine has the potential to play a large role in the international community’s efforts to scale up HIV treatment. The sub-licence is for the generic manufacturers to make the generic versions of TAF for 112 developing countries.
In studies, TAF had demonstrated comparable antiviral efficacy to that of 300 milligram tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) — a World Health Organization-preferred HIV therapy — but at a dose that is one-tenth.
