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The German pharmaceutical company Merck KGaA has joined WIPO Re:Search consortium, a public-private consortium to help find new ways of using intellectual property (IP) for medicines and diagnostics used to treat neglected tropical diseases.
The WIPO Re:Search consortium started in 2011 and is overseen by the World Intellectual Property Organization. It now has 94 members which include pharmaceutical firms and other research groups.
Its database provides details of IP assets, including chemical compounds available for licensing from a provider. All the information is publicly available and can be accessed without registration.
Providers agree to grant users royalty-free access to this IP, anywhere in the world for the sole purpose of addressing public health needs for any or all NTDs in the world’s least developed countries.
Jennifer Dent, president of BIO Venture for Global Health, a partnership hub administrator based in Seattle, Washington, said: “Being able to tap into the compound libraries that companies have around those assets is really a critical component to our goals in WIPO Re:Search.”
