Universities Allied for Essential Medicines - UC Irvine
UAEM's Mission
Universities Allied for Essential Medicines has a two-fold mission:
  1. to determine how universities can help ensure that biomedical end products, such as drugs, are made more accessible in poor countries, and
  2. to increase the amount of research conducted on neglected diseases, or those diseases predominantly affecting people who are too poor to constitute a market attractive to private-sector R&D investment.
In both cases, universities are well-placed to make a difference. University scientists are major contributors in the drug development pipeline. At the same time, universities have an avowed commitment to advancing the public good. As members of these universities, our fundamental goal is to hold them to this commitment.

UAEM History

UAEM was founded in 2001 at Yale University, out of a dynamic student movement over the antiretroviral drug d4T (stavudine), patented by Yale and licensed to Bristol-Myers Squibb. Commercially branded as Zerit, the drug was unaffordable in the parts of the world that needed it most, including South Africa, where in 2000 half a million people were infected with HIV, but only an estimated one percent of them received antiretroviral therapy.

UAEM students, with the partnership of Doctors Without Borders, researchers, and university officials, campaigned successfully to bring Bristol-Meyers Squibb to change its position. The pharmaceutical company agreed to allow generic d4T to be produced for sale in South Africa, and it also reduced the price of Zerit to 15 cents a day. In 2003, the drugs were registered by Aspen Pharmacare and sold generically for up to 40% less than the discounted price for Zerit.

While this was a victory for Yale and its students, thousands of people died of AIDS while the fight for d4T went on. The fact remains that pharmaceuticals and devices are being patented and licensed every year without being made accessible to developing countries. UAEM was founded to address this issue from a prospective rather than retrospective point of view, encouraging universities to change the nature of their licensing agreements so that their discoveries are available to developing countries from the outset.

Since then, UAEM chapters have been formed at over 30 universities. The organization has received the endorsement of the Ford Foundation, recognition by the WHO’s Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health, and the support of many others.

Other UAEM Chapters

There are UAEM chapters at universities throughout the country and internationally, including:
Please see www.uaem.org for more information.

  • Case Western Reserve University
  • College of William & Mary
  • Columbia University
  • Cornell University/Rockefeller
  • Dartmouth College
  • Duke University
  • Emory University
  • Georgetown University
  • Georgia Tech University
  • Harvard University
  • Johns Hopkins University
  • McGill University
  • New York University
  • Oregon Health & Science University
  • Oxford University
  • Princeton University
  • Stanford University
  • Saint Louis University
  • University of British Columbia
  • University of California, Berkeley
  • University of California, Los Angeles
  • University of California, Irvine
  • University of California, San Francisco
  • University of California, San Diego
  • University of Florida
  • University of Maryland
  • University of Massachusetts
  • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  • University of North Carolina
  • University of Pennsylvania
  • University of Toronto
  • University of Washington
  • Yale University
  • York University