FLICKR, CANDYThe European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) recent drive toward making preclinical and clinical data on experimental drugs more freely available was hampered this week after a European court ordered the agency not to release information from two US pharmaceutical companies, reported ScienceInsider.
The temporary injunction imposed by the General Court of the European Union backs Chicago-based AbbVie and California-based InterMune, which both filed complaints claiming that the release of information about their therapies would jeopardize their commercial interests.
The EMA began pushing for increased sharing of preclinical and clinical data on experimental drugs in 2010, after a European watchdog body ruled that it should release data in response to requests from a nonprofit organization. The agency has since responded to 613 requests for clinical data and released roughly 1.9 million pages of information, according to ScienceInsider.
The EMA has made it clear that it does not aim to aid competitors by allowing access to such information, however, and often redacts certain details. On the other hand, the ...
