On August 5, 2016, KEI received a response from the Department of the Army to KEI and UACT’s January 14, 2016 request that the Army and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) exercise the governments’ rights in the patents for the prostate cancer drug Xtandi.
The Army’s letter, sent by the US Army Medical Research and Material Command, “decline[d] to exercise the government’s march-in authorities or utilize the government’s license to the enzalutamide patents.”
In the brief letter, the justification given for the denial only considered whether supplies of Xtandi were low or whether health/safety needs were being met by the manufacturers, and failed to address KEI’s main issue – that Xtandi’s exorbitant pricing made it unavailable on reasonable terms to the public. Below are links to the materials included in the response from the US Army:
- US Army Response Letter
- Information Paper Re: March-In Rights
- Information Paper Supplement
- Appendices A-H
The NIH’s response to the January 2016 request was received on June 20, 2016, and is available here.
For more information on the Xtandi request, please visit: www.keionline.org/xtandi