Seminar with Blanka Bartos

How to ensure better access to Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) in the future?

Abstract

ATMPs are technological innovations, they revolutionize the treatment of diseases that used to be often incurable. Although they can offer promising health benefits, they are also a source of major risks for patients. They are manufactured in a customized way with high technicity and generally, only one shot is enough to treat the patient. As a result of curing mostly orphan diseases, the scope of use of these products is narrow.

These are some of the reasons why ATMPs are extremely expensive and why they do not fit in the current regulatory and economic framework. Public authorities have different types of contracts with pharmaceutical companies, so-called “managed entry agreements” (MEA). Most of the European countries are convinced that financial agreements are the best solution to reduce prices, but some of them prefer performance-based contracts to manage uncertainties. Unfortunately, confidentiality is a barrier to evaluating objectively their strengths and weaknesses. Greater transparency and an extended collaboration between states could help them negotiate better with drug laboratories.

Furthermore, not only certain types of contracts could reduce obstacles to access to ATMPs. Making a reform in national health insurance systems, developing international competition law, emphasizing the importance of prevention and the role of international organizations would also have a huge impact in letting patients use life-saving therapies as soon as they entered the market.

Time

24 January 2022, 17:00-18:00 CET

Place

Zoom, link provided upon registration

Registration 

Please register no later than the 21 January 2022 at 13:00 (CET) using this registration form

Bio

Blanka Bartos is a Ph.D. candidate at the Research Center on International Markets and Investment Law (CREDIMI) at the University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté (UBFC) in France. The subject of her thesis is the ‘contracts for access to Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs)’. In her articles published in European and American reviews, she expressed her aim to improve the trade of innovative medicines. She is also a member of the Gene and Cell Therapy Institute in France.

Previously of her doctoral research, Blanka has obtained an LL.M. in French, European and international business law at the University of Paris-Panthéon-Assas (France) and an American legal expert LL.M. degree at the University of Toledo (USA). She received her J.D. legal degree at the University of Szeged (Hungary) with a specialization in international law. Blanka pursued legal studies also in Bonn (Germany) and Lyon (France) and practiced law, besides some law firms and institutions, at the Federal Chancellery of Vienna, at the Meridian International Center in Washington, D.C., at the Permanent Delegation of Hungary to the OECD and UNESCO, and at a Regional Court of Appeal in Hungary.

Blanka is the sole legal fellow in the Jr. Templeton Program where a hundred talented individuals were selected from 20.000 candidates. She used to be a professional athlete, a multiple national and European champion in fitness, ice dancing, and powerlifting.