For Immediate Release
Wednesday, March 1, 2023
Contact:
[email protected]
Washington, DC - Following the announcement that Eli Lilly & Co. will be lowering the price and costs of insulin for consumers, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) issued the following statement.
Ted Malpass, a UAEM student leader at the University of Santa Cruz said “As a University student and patient who has been prescribed Humalog, the insulin that Eli Lilly was the first to commercialize, genetically synthesize, and monetize, I hope today's victory lasts a lifetime. Humalog was built off Lilly’s purchase of $1 more than 100 years ago from the University of Toronto and at the new list price of $25, the spirit of Insulin's inception was recognized today. It was a daily travesty to study as a Type 1 Diabetic knowing that the heights of research and innovation that was done at University of Toronto became a discovery that was not used to uplift but crush future generations. This will hopefully cement the importance of the role pharmaceutical giants can play in delivering lifesaving university research to patients who are in need.”
Eli Lilly's recent decision will change the experience for millions of patients in the U.S. and around the world, but the fact that only one manufacturer has taken these steps speaks to the very point of our work. Universities Allied for Essential Medicines is calling for technologies developed on our campuses to be available and affordable for people who need them today, not 100 years later. It's time for us to take a hard look at university patenting and licensing to make sure patients don't have to suffer for a century before a company changes its business model.
That is why we have created the Equitable Technology Access Framework, a tool that can be used by universities to get ahead of their patenting, licensing, and technology transfer strategies to ensure patients can afford the lifesaving inventions created in our labs.
###
Universities Allied for Essential Medicines Files Citizen Petition at FDA Demanding Agency Fix Underenforcement of Clinical Trial Reporting Regulations
WASHINGTON, DC, February 27, 2023 – Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) North America, with assistance from Columbia Law School’s Science, Health and Information Clinic (SHIC), filed a citizen petition at the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on February 27th to urge the agency to improve enforcement of clinical trial transparency. Transparency laws require public access to studies on drugs and medical devices, benefitting patients and researchers, but FDA has underenforced the law, keeping potentially life-saving data from the public.
“We filed this petition because we want the FDA to enforce the law more, to do so in a way that makes sense from a public health perspective, and to increase transparency and public accountability regarding the agency's enforcement decisions,” says Navya Dasari, member of the UAEM Coordinating Committee and lead of the Clinical Trial Transparency Campaign.
UAEM’s petition demands more and smarter enforcement of clinical trial reporting requirements imposed by the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act (FDAAA). FDAAA is the key federal clinical trial transparency law, which requires companies, universities, government labs, and other entities that run clinical trials to register their trials on ClinicalTrials.gov and report trial results to the same database. FDAAA empowers FDA to warn those entities when they fail to submit trial results to ClinicalTrials.gov, with Preliminary Notices of Non-Compliance (Pre-Notices) and Notices of Noncompliance.
See UAEM's filed Citizen Petition here.
Continue reading
