Pioneering research rewarded with €2m in ERC funding
The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) has been awarded a €2m European Research Council grant to investigate how access to medicines could be improved across the globe.
Every year approximately ten million people around the world die from lack of access to lifesaving medicines. High prices generated by the intellectual property rights (IPR) system are partly responsible, leaving patients – particularly those in developing countries and emerging markets – unable to access the medicines they need.
The UCLan team plans to research how the IPR system could be supplemented so that the availability of medicines is improved worldwide. They will undertake multidisciplinary research on performance-based rewards for pharmaceutical innovation. It’s hoped that medicine development can be rewarded according to measurable global health impact rather than through patent-protected mark-ups.
The research project entitled ‘Performance-based Innovation Rewards’ will be led by Professor Thomas Pogge, from UCLan. He said: “There are no easy solutions to mitigating the disadvantages of the international IPR system. With the ERC funding, my team will be able to spend five years in a sustained effort to resolve one of the most intractable problems of the 20th and 21st Century.”
Professor Doris Schroeder, director of the Centre for Professional Ethics at UCLan, added: “I am very proud and hopeful that Thomas’ team will provide a breakthrough in the problem of access to lifesaving medicines for the poor. The ERC funding is not only a recognition of his global standing given that the ERC only funds exceptional research leaders and pioneering work, it is also a means to an end that the Centre has been working towards for ten years now, namely a significant improvement in the lives of the poor.”
