The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) announced the signing of a voluntary licensing agreement with Novartis AG to increase access to nilotinib, a twice daily oral medication used to treat chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML), part of the World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines (WHO EML) for treatment in adults and children of at least one year of age.
Through this agreement, selected generic manufacturers will have the opportunity to develop, manufacture and supply generic versions of nilotinib in the licensed territory, subject to local regulatory authorisation.
This is the first licence that MPP has signed for a cancer treatment, and the first time a company is licensing a patented cancer medicine through a public health-oriented voluntary licensing mechanism.