The most promising Covid-19 treatments and vaccines being explored right now were made possible by a little-known law that encourages licensing agreements between private pharmaceutical companies and government-funded researchers.
Treatments such as Gilead’s remdesivir, Ridgeback Biotherapeutics’ EIDD-2801 drug, and Moderna’s vaccine candidate were all achieved through public-private partnerships that didn’t exist before the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980.
image: A magnified coronavirus is displayed on a desktop computer monitor during coronavirus patient sample detection tests in the virology research labs at UZ Leuven university hospital in Leuven, Belgium, on Feb. 28, 2020.
Photographer: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Bloomberg