Universities have long been hubs of biomedical innovation, but a nonprofit organization says that American institutions of higher learning have fallen short in creating life-saving medicine for the diseases that currently have much of the developing world under siege.
This week, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), a student-led nonprofit that promotes access to medicines in low and middle-income countries, released its second University Report Card: Global Equity and Biomedical Research, a tool of reference that ranks the United States’ leading research institutions on their commitment to biomedical research that meets global health needs.
The findings didn’t show many of the universities in a positive light. Data compiled by the nonprofit showed that just 17 of the top 59 universities have endorsed detailed standards for socially responsible licensing, which encourages innovation to address overlooked global health challenges. Only eight higher education institutions prioritize generic production of university-researched medicine for developing countries. And on average, a mere 1.5 percent of all PubMed publications at the top 59 universities have a focus on neglected diseases.
To create the report card, researchers compiled information from university websites, online grant databases, and search engines. They also collected survey data from university officials. Criteria that UAEM measured included innovation — determined by investments in medical research that addresses the health needs of low and middle-income countries — the level of access that allows treatment to be affordable, and quality of global public health education at the university.
“Universities have a crucial opportunity to put people before profit,” Merith Basey, UAEM’s executive director, said in a press statement. UAEM representatives said the report card would hold universities accountable in furthering public health research and ensuring affordable treatments for people living in low and middle-income countries.
“Since most universities are public institutions whose medical research is primarily funded by government grants that come from taxpayer dollars, they have a responsibility to ensure their research serves the public interest. They have a unique opportunity to directly support equitable access to medicines from their development on campus,” Basey added.
Indeed, universities bear a significant burden in bridging gaps in research. At least 25 percent of new medicines have origins in a university lab, particularly those related to HIV/AIDS treatment. In the wake of the Ebola outbreak, universities led much of the research efforts, using what they learned about how the virus enters the body to develop potentially effective treatment. During that outbreak, conversations among public health experts shifted to the impact of greater academic output from universities to develop affordable treatments for people living in the developing world.
Neglected diseases plague an estimated one billion people around the world, many of whom live in parts of Africa and Latin America. These diseases don’t inspire a lot of public health attention and researchers or pharmaceutical companies don’t invest much into treating them because they afflict impoverished people and therefore don’t return large profits. Even when treatments are available, getting medicine to low and middle-income countries accounts for a significant portion of health costs in those nations. Today, one out of three people in developing countries cannot access treatment for HIV/AIDS and other ailments.
In its report, UAED suggested that universities should help address these issues by working to increase the proportion of total medical research resources devoted to treating neglected diseases, and recruiting faculty and students who specialize in these diseases. When it comes to licensing, the nonprofit suggested that universities create open, non-exclusive licensing that enables the production of affordable, generic treatments. UAEM also said that offering more courses about the burden of neglected diseases and the role of university patenting, licensing and technology in public health would support the lab research.
“Universities play a key role in conducting research that leads to life-saving medicines,” Judit Rius Sanjuan, U.S. Manager & Legal Policy Adviser, Access Campaign with Doctors Without Borders, said in a press statement. “University decisions about what research to prioritize — and how to license that research to the private sector — have tremendous consequences for the lives of millions of people around the world.”
Encouraging universities to create affordable, live-saving medicine for people in low and middle-income countries, however, would be a huge undertaking at a time when dwindling enrollment, cuts in education funding at the state and federal level, and reluctance to raise tuition have forced these institutions to look for other revenue sources. While research universities develop thousands of business deals for the use of their patents, the dollars generated don’t cover the cost of running the research office, as found in a study conducted by the Brookings Institute in 2013.
Even with the passage of a 1980 federal law that gave universities ownership of patents funded by federal grants, few institutions have made breakthroughs that garner huge amounts of money. In turn, institutions of higher learning, and particularly the professors that lead innovative research, have increasingly seen themselves as business entities. For example, Cornell University’s applied science graduate school, will set aside space for aspiring business moguls to get started in its Roosevelt Island-based home which is currently under construction.
But UAEM representatives said that universities, institutions that conduct publicly funded research, shouldn’t take the lead of pharmaceutical companies in placing profit before the well-being of the people.
“In the long run, we do need to think about a system where the revenue consideration is not the main consideration of how these things are licensed, particularly if they’re funded with government resources,” Bryan Collinsworth, then the executive director of UAEM, told the Washington Post in 2013. “In most cases, it’s not like these licensing deals bring in a steady stream of moderate licensing [revenue]. Many licensing offices actually spend more to stay open than they bring in. Those that are lucrative have one or a handful of blockbuster medications.”