Molecular farming, patents and access to medicines

Transgenic plants have several advantages over other expression systems for the production of recombinant medicines, including low costs, large-scale production and the ability to produce complex multimeric proteins with appropriate post-translational modifications. Several plant-made pharmaceuticals, including the enzyme glucocerebrosidase, insulin and IFN-alpha(2b), are approaching commercialization and these developments have been accompanied by considerable patenting activity. In the present article, we investigated plant-made pharmaceutical patents between the years 2002 and 2008. There was a clear downward trend in the number of patents filed between these years and a greater number of patents were filed by public sector institutions or inventors than by the private sector. The USA dominated patenting activity providing nearly 30% of inventors. The majority of patents were for vaccine candidates (55%), followed by therapeutics (38%) and antibodies (7%). The relationship of patenting to innovation and access to medicines, particularly in the developing world, will be discussed.