Letter to Sanofi calling for patent withdrawals on critical TB drugs
TAG and OTMeds call on Sanofi to reverse its efforts to patent two obvious combinations of two critical drugs to prevent TB: rifapentine and isoniazid.
On 3 August 2020, Treatment Action Group (TAG) and Observatoire de la transparence dans les politiques du médicaments (OTMeds) sent a letter to Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson calling on the company to reverse its efforts to patent two obvious combinations of two critical drugs to prevent TB: rifapentine and isoniazid.
When taken together, rifapentine and isoniazid form the World Health Organization-recommended 3HP regimen used to prevent TB. The drugs are decades old and were developed primarily with public resources. To keep rifapentine and isoniazid in the public domain, TAG and OTMeds called on Sanofi to withdraw its patent applications from all jurisdictions and to surrender these patents in countries where they have already been granted.
To read the full letter, click here.
(English version is followed by the French)
