ViiV Healthcare grants licence to Medicines Patent Pool to improve access to Tivicay

Viiv Healthcare, the HIV/AIDS joint venture of UK pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (LSE: GSK), US drugmaker Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) and Japanese drug major Shionogi (TYO: 4507) has announced new collaborations to increase access to its HIV medicine Tivicay (dolutegravir).

Through an agreement with the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), ViiV Healthcare will accelerate access to Tivicay where the need is the greatest, in the countries where 99% of children and 93.4% of adults with HIV in the developing world live. It comes just two months after the drug’s approval by the European Medicines Agency on January 20 and eight months after approval by the US Food and Drug Administration in August 2013. Tivicay is expected to become the leading integrase inhibitor for HIV by 2016 and is expected to generate annual sales of up to $2.1 billion, according to Datamonitor Healthcare.

Dominique Limet, chief executive of ViiV Healthcare, said: “Our new collaborations prioritize dolutegravir access for millions of children and adults with HIV, and represent another step in our ongoing commitment to improving access and delivering innovation in the areas of highest unmet need. We recognize that important new agents have the potential to make a real difference in resource poor settings.  In fact, the World Health Organization has recently cited dolutegravir as a development priority for future anti-retroviral treatments for children–it is currently approved for children 12 years and older. Therefore, accelerating access to medicines like dolutegravir is of the utmost importance.”