23 February 2022
Geneva – The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) celebrates an announcement by the World Health Organization (WHO) to establish a global biomanufacturing training hub in the Republic of Korea that will serve low- and middle-income countries to produce biologicals, such as vaccines, insulin, monoclonal antibodies and cancer treatments.
MPP also welcomes the announcement that five more countries will receive support from the global mRNA technology transfer hub to produce mRNA vaccines. The countries are Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Serbia and Vietnam. This announcement comes after African manufacturers from Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia were selected last week to receive mRNA technology from the Hub, in addition to Biovac in South Africa.
Companies from Argentina and Brazil, the first countries from the region of the Americas to receive mRNA technology from the Hub in South Africa, are already receiving training.
WHO announcement is available here.
Press and Media
The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) is a United Nations-backed public health organisation working to increase access to and facilitate the development of life-saving medicines for low- and middle-income countries. Through its innovative business model, MPP partners with civil society, governments, international organisations, industry, patient groups, and other stakeholders to prioritise and license needed medicines and pool intellectual property to encourage generic manufacture and the development of new formulations.
To date, MPP has signed agreements with 22 patent holders for 13 HIV antiretrovirals, one HIV technology platform, three hepatitis C direct-acting antivirals, a tuberculosis treatment, a cancer treatment, four long-acting technologies, a post-partum haemorrhage medicine, three oral antiviral treatments for COVID-19 and 16 COVID-19 technologies.
MPP was founded by Unitaid, which continues to be MPP’s main funder. MPP’s work on access to essential medicines is also funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Government of Canada, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Government of Flanders. MPP’s activities in COVID-19 are undertaken with the financial support of the Japanese Government, the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, the German Agency for International Cooperation, and SDC.