IPM Reaches Landmark Agreement with Pfizer to Develop FDA-Approved Antiretroviral Drug as Vaginal M...(or stop thisepidemic. Under this agr...),Health

Under this agreement, IPM would work to develop maraviroc as a vaginal microbicide with the right to develop, manufacture and distribute the microbicide in developing countries. Pfizer has granted these rights to IPM without a royalty.

"Women in the developing world are especially vulnerable to HIV, and urgently need new ways to protect themselves," said Dr. Tachi Yamada, president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Health Program. "For Pfizer to offer one of its most important new drugs to benefit the poorest of the poor shows a special act of commitment. I hope their example will point the way for other companies to consider how they can address major global health challenges as well."

To date, five leading pharmaceutical companies have entered partnerships with IPM. In March 2004, IPM signed an agreement with Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Tibotec Pharmaceuticals Ltd. to develop the company's non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor dapivirine as a microbicide. In October 2005, IPM entered agreements with Merck & Co. and Bristol-Myers Squibb to develop CCR5 blocker and entry inhibitor compounds early in development, and in December 2006 IPM reached an agreement with Gilead Sciences to develop tenofovir (PMPA), a nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor.

HIV/AIDS ranks among the world's most devastating diseases because it has spread rapidly and mainly afflicts young people in their most productive years. Women, particularly those in developing countries, bear an increasing burden of the epidemic as both caregivers for the ill and because of their heightened risk of infection due to greater physiological, economic and social vulnerabilities. According to the UN, in sub-Saharan Africa, almost 61 percent of adults living with HIV are women. In many African countries, women and girls aged 15 to 24 are three times more likely to be HIV-infected than their male counterparts.

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