How the US patent system keeps drug prices high
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, it's Flora Lichtman, and you're listening to Science Friday. Americans pay roughly three times as much for prescription meds compared to other wealthy and developed nations. It's an issue that cuts across party lines. Both the Biden and Trump administrations rolled out their own proposals to address this. But the problem persists.
Why do Americans pay so much for prescription drugs?
So why are our drugs so expensive? My next guest argues it's largely to do with how our patent systems work. if that sounds wonky hang with us it's actually really interesting and tahir amin will tell you why he has a really unique perspective because he's been on both sides of this issue he's spent a decade as an intellectual property lawyer helping corporations use patents to protect their bottom lines then he moved to india and saw firsthand how the global patent system hampered access to hiv drugs And so he started an advocacy organization to make access to medicines more equitable. He lays it all out in a new book called Pharma Monopoly, The Battle for the Future of Medicines. Tahir, welcome to Science Friday.
Thank you, Flora. Thanks for having me.
Let's just step back for a second. So we have this patent system. What was the original intent of it?
So the patent system was created to incentivize invention. And so the incentive was you come up with a new novel invention, something that is not obvious to somebody in that field. Obviously, you invest some of your time and money into that. And then the system provides you with a limited time of exclusivity. So what you have now is a system where from a date of filing a patent, you get 20 years of exclusivity. The problem is today, pharmaceutical companies and other companies in different fields have worked out that I can actually have overlapping patents that extend that period of protection in order to keep competition out.
And so this is where... Overlapping patents for the same drug?
So for example, yeah. So if I've come up with an invention for a compound that goes to make the actual product, the medicine, we call it the active ingredient, let's say. It gives the sort of curative effect or the therapeutic effect.
What role does the US patent system play in drug pricing?
And then what I do then is, oh, well, I need to, if I'm a company, I need to then get this drug into the body. So I'll come up with a formulation. And then I realized this drug can also be used on several different indications, different conditions. So for example, I know the mechanism of action of the molecule can be used to treat, let's say, inflammation. So I will test it on all the different types of inflammation. It's the same drug. But each time I get an FDA approval, For each of those conditions, I get a separate patent. And this then adds on the layers. And then I can also formulate it so that when I release it, when I launch the product with its first form, it might be an intravenous form. And then I can switch it to an injectable form.
And that adds on new life to the patent. Now, the argument from the industry is, well, eventually the patent on the original form will run out so that competitors can use that. But the market is much more complicated than that because what companies do is they switch patients onto the new form. And so the clock restarts again and the monopoly restarts again. A great example of that is the cancer drug Keytruda, which is on the market, one of the best-selling drugs ever. And what Merck has done is they've now launched an injectable form of the drug. It's previously delivered in an IV form. So now they're trying to switch the whole market over to the injectable form before its patents run out. So then they've got a new level of protection around the injectable form, and then the clock restarts, and they've basically cannibalized any market that might exist for any competitor coming in.
Is there any limit to the number of patents that a company can attach to a single active ingredient?
There is a limit to the active ingredient that a company can apply for. So you get the original patent, which covers the active ingredient. But beyond that, there is no limit on the variations you can file patents for.
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