Accelerating pooled licensing of medicines to enhance global production and equitable access

In 2021, pharmaceutical firms Merck and Pfizer licensed their new COVID-19 oral antiviral medications to the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP). In both cases, the drugs were licensed quickly, before they were launched, and the MPP then reached agreements with pharmaceutical firms across the globe to provide generic versions of both drugs to poorer countries. This Viewpoint examines the significance of these licenses for global production and access of new medicines, in the pandemic and beyond. I place the recent MPP licenses in the context of the agency’s history since 2010, when it was created, and I discuss the significance of the new licenses. In doing so I show how the MPP's role is changing, pointing to the political conditions that may make originator firms more inclined to license their products quickly to the MPP, and I discuss how public policy can build on the opportunity created by these conditions to promote this further with the introduction of a prize mechanism.