In this issue

Issue 109 • August 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic has reignited a hotly debated issue among pharma companies: patents. While there are now multiple vaccine options on the market, access has been relatively limited for those living in lower-income nations. To speed up vaccination efforts in these areas, a group of nations including India and South Africa have called for drugmakers to temporarily waive their intellectual property (IP) rights to Covid-19 vaccines.

While advocates of the move argue that, if permitted, an IP waiver would allow vaccine makers in poorer countries to produce jabs without risking legal action, critics are not convinced that changing patent law would have a significant impact on the number of vaccinations being administered. But what could a patent waiver actually mean for drugmakers? We find out.  

Staying with the topic of vaccines, we examine the reasons why the chickenpox vaccine is absent from the roster of childhood vaccines in the UK despite being a part of routine jabs in the US since 1995. 

Plus, we investigate the growing health threat of black fungus in India to understand why the number of cases has soared alongside Covid-19 and what pharma companies are doing to fight it, and find out how algae proteins are being used to improve the sight of visually impaired patients. 

All this and more in this latest issue of Pharma Technology Focus.

Eloise Mclennan, editor

Go to article: Home | Waive goodbye to vaccine patentsGo to article: In this issueGo to article: ContentsGo to article: Mimotopes Company Insight Go to article: MimotopesGo to article: DatwylerGo to article: Datwyler Company InsightGo to article: LabcorpGo to article: Biesterfeld Go to article: BriefingGo to article: Industry newsGo to article: The pharma industry briefingGo to article: Covid-19 executive briefing by GlobalDataGo to article: Dr. Paul LohmannGo to article: ButterworthGo to article: SkyepharmaGo to article: BaxterGo to article: CommentGo to article: Speeding up patient access to innovative drugsGo to article: The competitive landscape of neoantigen-targeting therapeutics in oncologyGo to article: Bacterial “cell factories”: an eco-friendly approach to chemical productionGo to article: MDR set to transform how MedTech firms approach content managementGo to article: PerkinElmerGo to article: NiproGo to article: NiproGo to article: In DepthGo to article: Should UK children be vaccinated against chickenpox?Go to article: Fighting India’s ‘black fungus’ epidemicGo to article: What could a vaccine patent waiver mean for pharma manufacturing? Go to article: Algae proteins: a vision of the futureGo to article: A brief history of ALS awareness and its sparse treatments Go to article: Ferring draws closer to a microbiome breakthroughGo to article: The Solubility companyGo to article: Myonex Go to article: Owen MumfordGo to article: In DataGo to article: Data: pharma subsidiaries Go to article: Deals analysisGo to article: The pharma industry key listGo to article: Global markets and indicesGo to article:  Macro-economic indicatorsGo to article: Macro-economic indicators (page 2)Go to article: EventsGo to article: Next issue