Evaluation of Gilead’s Voluntary Licensing

Project Overview

Boston University is evaluating Gilead’s voluntary licensing (VL) program.

Since 2005, millions of HIV-positive patients in low- and middle-income countries have received lifesaving antiretroviral therapy through Gilead’s voluntary licensing program for tenofovir. More recently this approach has been expanded to sofosbuvir for the treatment of Hepatitis C.

To date, a rigorous evaluation has not been done to understand this process of making medicines available.

Key activities

• Review of peer-reviewed and grey literature about Gilead’s VL program
• Discussion with international experts about the achievements and challenges of Gilead’s VL program
• Analysis of publicly available procurement data to assess the program’s achievements

Agreement

The Master Service Agreement signed by Boston University and Gilead is available here.

Report

A report describing the project and the main findings is available here.