Abstract
Monoclonal antibodies represent one of biomedicine's greatest successes, yet global access remains profoundly inequitable, with low- and middle-income countries bearing the brunt of limited access. This perspective proposes that long-acting infectious disease mAbs, starting with WHO-recommended nirsevimab for RSV prevention, could catalyze transformation by connecting with existing WHO Essential Medicines List mAbs. Picture two static half-circles: WHO Essential Medicines List mAbs with proven value but limited access, and infectious disease prevention mAbs with transformative potential. Connected, they form a complete wheel capable of rolling toward the aspirations of global pharmacoequity. HIV antiretroviral therapy demonstrates precedent—costs declined 100-fold through political mobilization, not technological breakthroughs.
1 Introduction: the static half-circles
Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) represent one of biomedicine's greatest successes—yet global access remains profoundly inequitable. While more than 130 mAbs are approved in the United States (), only sixteen appear on the current WHO Essential Medicines List (Table 1), and billions lack access to these life-saving drugs (). The long-acting infectious disease mAb nirsevimab for RSV prevention when combined with the existing WHO Essential Medicines List mAbs create a critical mass that could catalyze improved access to mAbs in LMICs. As additional infectious disease mAbs for malaria and HIV gain approval, this combined effort could grow like a snowball.
Table 1
| mAb | Target | Year approved | EML section & indications | Annual tonnage for unmet need (tons)** |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cancer | ||||
| blinatumomab (Blincyto)a | Anti-CD19 | 2014 | 8.2.3 B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia | 0.001 |
| rituximab (Rituxan/MabThera)a | Anti-CD20 | 1997 | 5.1.2 multiple sclerosis 8.2.2 Burkitt lymphoma, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, follicular lymphoma | 1.1 |
| trastuzumab (Herceptin) | HER2 receptor | 1998 | 8.2.2 HER2-positive breast cancer | 2.8 |
| nivolumab (Opdivo) | PD-1 checkpoint | 2014 | 8.2.3 metastatic melanoma | 0.2 |
| pembrolizumab (Keytruda) | PD-1 checkpoint | 2014 | 8.2.3 metastatic cervical cancer, metastatic colorectal cancer, metastatic non-small cell lung cancer, metastatic melanoma | 0.6 |
| atezolizumab (Tecentriq) | PD-L1 checkpoint | 2016 | 8.2.3 metastatic non-small cell lung cancer | 3 |
| cemiplimab (Libtayo) | PD-1 checkpoint | 2018 | 8.2.3 metastatic non-small cell lung cancer | 0.9 |
| Hematology | ||||
| emicizumab (Hemlibra)a | Factor IX-a & X | 2017 | 10.2 hemophilia A | 1 |
| Inflammatory disease | ||||
| infliximab (Remicade)a | TNF-alpha* | 1998 | 8.1 immunomodulators for non-malignant disease 13.4 medicines affecting skin differentiation and proliferation 29.3 medicines for juvenile joint diseases | 1.1 |
| adalimumab (Humira)a | TNF-alpha* | 2002 | 8.1 immunomodulators for non-malignant disease 13.4 medicines affecting skin differentiation and proliferation 29.3 medicines for juvenile joint diseases | 6.5 |
| certolizumab pegol (Cimzia)a | TNF-alpha* | 2008 | 8.1 immunomodulators for non-malignant disease 13.4 medicines affecting skin differentiation and proliferation 29.3 medicines for juvenile joint diseases | 2.7 |
| golimumab (Simponi) | TNF-alpha* | 2009 | 8.1 immunomodulators for non-malignant disease 29.3 medicines for juvenile joint diseases | 0.3 |
| ustekinumab (Stelara)a | IL-12 & IL-23 antagonist | 2023 | 13.4 medicines affecting skin differentiation and proliferation | 1.1 |
| Infectious disease | ||||
| Anti-rabies mAbs (Rabishield)a | Rabies virus | 19.2 sera, immunoglobulins and monoclonal antibodies | 1.1 | |
| ansuvimab-zykl (Ebanga)a | Ebola virus | 2023 | 6.7 medicines for Ebola virus disease | 0.004 |
| atoltivimab, maftivimab, odesivimab (Inmazeb)a | Ebola virus | 2023 | 6.7 medicines for Ebola virus disease | 0.012 |
| Nirsevimab (Beyfortus)*** | RSV | 2023 | Not on EML | 7-14 |
| Clesrovimab (Enflonsia) | RSV | 2025 | Not on EML | *** |
| Total | 30-37 | |||
Who 2025 essential medicines list mAbs and RSV mAbs: global unmet need estimate.
Also listed on the Essential Medicines List for Children (EMLc).
Several mAbs are interchangeable, this is taken into account in the calculations.
Order-of-magnitude estimates based on global disease burden and standard dosing regimens, assuming ∼100 LMIC without access, 70 kg body weight, 1.7 m2 surface area.
Nirsevimab is the WHO-recommended long-acting RSV mAb for all infants (single dose protection). Clesrovimab represents an alternative long-acting option. The math for global access remains similar regardless of which RSV mAb is used.
Picture two half-circles lying motionless on the ground (Figure 1). The first represents the monoclonal antibodies on the WHO Essential Medicines List—rituximab (approved 1997), trastuzumab (1998), infliximab (1998), and others that transformed cancer and autoimmune disease treatment in high-income countries. Despite being available in high-income countries for 15-30 years, these therapeutic breakthroughs remain largely inaccessible to billions of people in approximately 100 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This half-circle, representing roughly 23 metric tons of annual unmet global need, sits static—powerful in potential but unable to generate momentum for systemic change (). Is the inertia driven by cost of goods or that drug companies simply are not interested in those markets because of poor ROIs?
Figure 1
The second half-circle represents long-acting infectious disease prevention mAbs, starting with nirsevimab for prevention of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Nirsevimab when administered at birth or at the start of RSV season is highly effective in preventing severe RSV disease (–).
2 The wheel begins to roll: infectious disease mAbs as infrastructure
The WHO recommendation for nirsevimab for RSV prevention represents both an unprecedented public health opportunity and the key to unlocking systemic transformation (). The two half-circles represent complementary volumes and populations. The first half-circle—WHO Essential Medicines List mAbs—requires 23 metric tons annually but serves smaller, targeted populations with cancer and autoimmune diseases. The second half-circle—long-acting infectious disease prevention mAbs starting with nirsevimab—requires 7-14 metric tons annually but reaches 140 million infants globally. Like the segments and peel of an orange, these complementary volumes create a complete, integrated whole when connected. The combination of RSV and WHO Essential Medicines List mAbs requires 30-37 metric tons, the production scale needed to make both economically viable.
The fragmented, disease-specific approach to mAb access is exemplified by pembrolizumab in India, where despite the country's position as a global biosimilar manufacturing hub, less than 1% of eligible patients access this life-saving therapy at ∼$6,000 per cycle, because individual disease markets lack the volume to justify dedicated manufacturing that could reduce costs to $50-100/gram (). This demonstrates why WHO Essential Medicines List mAbs cannot achieve momentum independently—even powerful cancer immunotherapies remain trapped in high-cost, low-access paradigms when treated as isolated markets rather than components of a unified therapeutic class.
This requires expanded manufacturing capacity—whether through scaling existing facilities or establishing new production sites closer to demand—plus temperature-controlled distribution networks, integration with maternal-child health programs, harmonized regulatory pathways, and community demand generation. Once this RSV + WHO Essential Medicines List connection is established and working, the same manufacturing and delivery systems can absorb malaria mAbs, HIV mAbs, and eventually grow to accommodate the full infectious disease portfolio as it gains approval: malaria prevention for 110 million children, HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis for 20-100 million children and adults, and HIV treatment for up to 40 million people living with HIV (–).
The predictability is equally transformative. Birth cohorts, malaria-endemic populations, HIV incidence and prevalence, cancer incidence change slowly year-to-year, enabling long-term contracts and planning.
3 The historical precedent: HIV treatment's 100-fold cost reduction
The history of HIV antiretroviral therapy (ART) provides a crucial precedent demonstrating that barriers to affordable biologics are primarily structural and political rather than technical. Between 2000 and 2008, ART costs in LMICs declined from approximately $10,000 per person-year to less than $100—a 100-fold reduction achieved in less than eight years not through manufacturing breakthroughs, but through political mobilization ().
Many actors and events created a perfect storm of political pressure, intellectual property flexibility, guaranteed procurement volumes, and manufacturing capacity. The 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa in 2000 proved pivotal—where 11-year-old Nkosi Johnson, born with HIV, spoke to delegates about the human cost of unequal access. The Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health (2001), PEPFAR and Global Fund establishment (2003), and Indian generic manufacturing scale-up transformed global treatment access. The same molecules—manufactured using identical or similar processes—cost 40-fold more in high-income countries ($3,000) than LMICs ($75) in 2024, a differential sustained for two decades through structural barriers ().
This comparison reveals that monoclonal antibodies have followed the slowest learning curve among major technologies over nearly four decades, declining only 33-fold despite innovations from establishment of Chinese Hamster Ovary cell lines platforms and initial scaling (era 1, 1975-1998) to blockbuster mAb commercialization (era 2, 1999-2019), to unprecedented clinical development and scale-up to >30 tons annual production of COVID-19 mAbs (era 3, 2020-2023), to further optimization and expansion in the present era 4 (). When political intervention created alternative market dynamics for ART, costs declined faster than mAb manufacturing optimization achieved through pure technological advancement.
Unlike complex antibody-drug conjugates, these mAbs are relatively simple—nirsevimab is an IgG1 antibody with YTE (3 amino acid mutation in the Fc part to extend the half-life by about 3-fold) as the only mutation. The persistence of high costs for such straightforward molecules highlights how structural barriers, not technical complexity, drive pricing.
This fragmentation persists today with devastating consequences. WHO recommends nirsevimab for all infants globally to prevent RSV disease, yet the same organization has not prequalified the medicine and excludes it from the Essential Medicines List (). This bureaucratic dysfunction prevents UNICEF procurement while 100,000 children die annually from preventable RSV disease in LMICs without access to nirsevimab—history repeating itself with tragic precision (). Just as HIV treatments existed in the 1990s but structural barriers delayed access for a decade, we now witness the same pattern with pediatric RSV prevention.
The lesson is clear: innovation alone is necessary but insufficient. Structural barriers—intellectual property regimes, procurement fragmentation, manufacturer market power—often determine access more than scientific breakthroughs.
4 The second wheel: eight segments for pharmacoequity
Moving from efficacy in a clinical trial to global population-level effectiveness requires addressing eight elements (segments, Figure 2) in parallel: (1) Efficacy demonstration in trials, (2) Regulatory approval through harmonized pathways, (3) Availability via technology transfer and local manufacturing, (4) Accessibility through delivery infrastructure, (5) Affordability via pooled procurement and TRIPS flexibilities, (6) Awareness among providers and patients, (7) Appropriateness for local contexts, and (8) Ask/Aspiration/Political will—the fundamental demand that life-saving interventions should be universally accessible regardless of geography or income () and the political will with concomitant budget allocation either at a government level or by global procurement agencies. The critical insight is parallel rather than sequential implementation. Engage the Medicines Patent Pool and generic manufacturers during Phase 3 trials. Negotiate technology transfer before licensure.
Figure 2
The “Aspiration” element may prove most fundamental. For decades, people in low-income countries were told antiretrovirals were too expensive, too complex to work outside high-income settings. This self-fulfilling prophecy that led to 10-12 million deaths () was shattered by among others the Treatment Action Campaign's assertion of equal right to life-saving treatment and studies showing that adherence to ART was better in rural Uganda than in the US (, ). The same assertion is required for mAbs: children in Mali and Kenya have identical rights to RSV protection as children in London and New York. More than 100,000 children die of RSV each year in LMIC that do not have access to nirsevimab, compared to less than 500 (before introduction of nirsevimab) in high-income countries that now have access (). Infants and toddlers can't advocate for themselves. We have to do that.
5 Expanded infectious diseases scope: mAbs for antimicrobial resistance, influenza prevention, pandemic preparedness capacity
Expanding the wheel’s momentum, monoclonal antibodies targeting influenza, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and pandemic preparedness represent the next frontier for integrated global access.
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated both the potential and limitations of mAb responses. While therapeutic mAbs like bebtelovimab provided crucial treatment options, production delays and strain-specific targeting limited global impact. The integrated manufacturing infrastructure proposed here could enable rapid pandemic mAb deployment, with established production capacity, regulatory pathways, and delivery networks ready for activation during emerging infectious disease outbreaks (, ).
Seasonal influenza causes 290,000-650,000 deaths annually, with disproportionate impact in LMICs (). Monoclonal antibodies targeting influenza are in clinical development (, ).
AMR causes approximately 1.27 million deaths annually, with particularly severe impact in LMICs where healthcare-associated infections encounter limited treatment options. mAbs against Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridium difficile are in advanced clinical development (). Unlike traditional antibiotics facing inevitable resistance, mAbs can target virulence factors, biofilms, and immune evasion mechanisms while potentially maintaining efficacy longer. For 50 million annual patients requiring AMR prophylaxis (100-500 mg doses), approximately 5-25 metric tons would be needed—adding meaningful volume to infectious disease mAb infrastructure while addressing one of modern medicine's greatest threats.
6 Era 5: is there a mAb for that?
Following the four eras of mAb development outlined above we could now enter era 5, characterized by cost-driven accessibility and therapeutic expansion. The rolling wheel unlocks therapeutic possibilities currently constrained by cost and fragmentation. With manufacturing costs decreasing further, mAbs become viable for indications beyond traditional oncology and autoimmune diseases. AMR, influenza prevention, migraine prevention, allergies, Alzheimer's disease, substance use disorders including fentanyl addiction—countless therapeutic targets remain unexplored because current mAb pricing makes development economically unfeasible or clinically inaccessible. The integrated manufacturing and delivery infrastructure creates the foundation for systematic exploration of the full therapeutic potential of monoclonal antibodies (, ).
The One Health approach reveals an additional volume catalyst: veterinary mAbs. With 900 million dogs, 600 million cats, and billions of livestock globally, animal health represents massive untapped demand. Existing veterinary mAbs like lokivetmab (Cytopoint, 2017) for atopic dermatitis, bedinvetmab (Librela, 2021) for canine osteoarthritis, and frunevetmab (Solensia, 2022) for feline pain demonstrate market viability. The same manufacturing infrastructure serving human infectious disease mAbs could simultaneously produce veterinary products, creating additional volume to drive costs down while serving both human and animal health needs.
7 The rolling wheels: integrated delivery vision
Once the wheel begins rolling, integrated delivery becomes possible. Maternal-child health programs delivering nirsevimab can simultaneously distribute WHO Essential Medicines List mAbs. The same cold chain infrastructure, community health workers, and regulatory pathways serve multiple products. This integration transforms episodic, disease-specific interventions into comprehensive pharmacoequity infrastructure. The wheel's momentum creates economies of scale—where delivering multiple mAbs together costs less than delivering each separately.
8 Breaking the sound barrier
“Breaking the sound barrier” represents the breakthrough moment when accumulated momentum overcomes systemic resistance. Like an aircraft breaking the sound barrier or encountering turbulence, the combined wheel of WHO Essential Medicines List mAbs and infectious disease prevention faces ups and downs, challenges and obstacles, as it travels the long and winding road to pharmacoequity. Individual efforts—whether rituximab access programs or standalone RSV campaigns—encounter turbulence and often stall. But when sufficient momentum builds through integrated volume, manufacturing scale, and delivery infrastructure, the wheel can break through to sustained, equitable access.
The barrier is not technical—we know how to manufacture these mAbs at scale. The barrier is structural: fragmented markets, intellectual property constraints, procurement silos, and regulatory inefficiencies. Once broken, the barrier reveals clear skies ahead: predictable demand, streamlined production, integrated delivery, and ultimately, pharmacoequity as the foundation rather than the exception.
9 Challenges and limitations
This vision faces significant challenges. Intellectual property regimes may limit generic competition. Regulatory harmonization requires unprecedented coordination. Cold chain infrastructure demands substantial investment. Political commitment must sustain across electoral cycles. Most critically, the approach requires viewing mAbs as a class of drugs rather than individual products—a shift from disease-specific silos to integrated pharmacoequity infrastructure.
Yet these challenges reflect structural barriers, not technical impossibilities. The HIV treatment precedent demonstrates that political mobilization can overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles when the imperative is clear.
10. Conclusion: the wheels in motion
The two half-circles lie before us: WHO Essential Medicines List mAbs with proven therapeutic value but limited access, and infectious disease prevention mAbs with transformative potential but uncertain implementation. Separately, they remain static. Together, they form a complete wheel capable of rolling toward global pharmacoequity.
An African proverb reminds us: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Individual mAb access programs—rituximab biosimilars, standalone RSV campaigns, disease-specific initiatives—may achieve rapid initial progress. But sustainable pharmacoequity requires going together: connecting WHO Essential Medicines List mAbs with infectious disease prevention, integrating manufacturing with delivery, aligning regulatory pathways across therapeutic areas. This collaborative approach may seem slower initially, but it builds the momentum needed to go far—toward a future where pharmacoequity is the foundation, not the exception.
The wheel can start rolling today by connecting nirsevimab for RSV with existing WHO Essential Medicines List mAb initiatives. As malaria and HIV mAbs gain approval, the wheel grows like a snowball, building momentum that becomes increasingly difficult to stop. Manufacturing investments become profitable. Delivery infrastructure becomes sustainable. Pharmacoequity becomes inevitable.
Thirty years after the first therapeutic mAb, we stand at an inflection point. We can continue the fragmented, fast-but-limited approach that has left billions without access to essential medicines—an approach that, for mAbs, has proven neither fast nor effective despite decades of effort. Going together may be the only viable path to mAb pharmacoequity. Together, we can connect the two half-circles and get the wheel rolling toward a future where place of birth no longer determines access to these essential medicines.
Statements
Data availability statement
Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data can be found here: https://www.who.int/data/sets/health-inequality-monitor-dataset#ihme-gbdhttps://www.who.int/publications/i/item/B09474.
Author contributions
HG: Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Conceptualization. GG: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft. BK: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft.
Funding
The author(s) declared that financial support was not received for this work and/or its publication.
Conflict of interest
BK was employed by BK Biopharma Consulting, LLC.
The remaining author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Generative AI statement
The author(s) declared that generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript.
Any alternative text (alt text) provided alongside figures in this article has been generated by Frontiers with the support of artificial intelligence and reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, including review by the authors wherever possible. If you identify any issues, please contact us.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
References
1.
Antibody Society. Antibody therapeutics approved or in regulatory review in the EU or US. Retrieved 25 February, 2026. (2026). Available online at:https://www.antibodysociety.org/resources/approved-antibodies/(Accessed February 25, 2026).
2.
WHO. The selection and use of essential medicines, 2025: WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, 24th list.” (2025).
3.
BlythCCWadiaUBrittonPNCarrJClarkJECrawfordNWet al. Respiratory syncytial virus epidemiology and effectiveness of infant nirsevimab: 2024 results from the Australian sentinel hospital network (FluCAN-PAEDS). Euro Surveill. (2026) 31(2):1–13. 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2026.31.2.2500275
4.
FerrariACScaramuzzaAEChioprisGMassariCScaramuzzinoFBernardiAet al. Real-world impact of nirsevimab on the epidemiology and severity of pediatric respiratory syncytial virus infections: a three-season cohort study in Italy.Eur J Pediatr. (2026) 185(2):80. 10.1007/s00431-026-06746-4
5.
Perramon-MalavezAChiarettiAComaECraiuMFosterSLeonardPet al. Real-world impact of nirsevimab immunisation and maternal RSV vaccination against respiratory disease on emergency department attendances and admissions: a multinational retrospective analysis.Lancet Reg Health Eur. (2026) 63:101597. 10.1016/j.lanepe.2026.101597
6.
YarnoffBNearyMPGabrielVGhemmouriMHodgesENTribaldosMet al. Estimation of public health impact with use of nirsevimab during the 2024-2025 RSV season in the USA: a modeling study. Pulm Ther. (2026). 10.1007/s41030-026-00348-z
7.
GuptaDSinghAGuptaNMehraNBahugunaPAggarwalVet al. Cost-Effectiveness of the first line treatment options for metastatic renal cell carcinoma in India.JCO Glob Oncol. (2023) 9:e2200246. 10.1200/GO.22.00246
8.
CoreyLGilbertPBJuraskaMMontefioriDCMorrisLKarunaSTet al. Two randomized trials of neutralizing antibodies to prevent HIV-1 acquisition. N Engl J Med. (2021) 384(11):1003–1014.
9.
GelderblomHCCoreyLBarouchDH. The potential of broadly neutralizing antibodies for HIV prevention.J Int AIDS Soc. (2024) 27(5):e26257. 10.1002/jia2.26257
10.
WangLTIdrisAHKisaluNKCromptonPDSederRA. Monoclonal antibodies to the circumsporozoite proteins as an emerging tool for malaria prevention.Nat Immunol. (2024) 25(9):1530–1545. 10.1038/s41590-024-01938-2
11.
BeyrerCRatevosianJCarpinoTRosenbergNEGelderblomHCSullivanPSet al. The HIV/AIDS response as we knew it is over: where do we go from here?J Int AIDS Soc. (2026) 29(2):e70077. 10.1002/jia2.70077
12.
KelleyB. The history and potential future of monoclonal antibody therapeutics development and manufacturing in four eras.MAbs. (2024) 16(1):2373330. 10.1080/19420862.2024.2373330
13.
LiYWangXBlauDMCaballeroMTFeikinDRGillCJet al. Global, regional, and national disease burden estimates of acute lower respiratory infections due to respiratory syncytial virus in children younger than 5 years in 2019: a systematic analysis. Lancet. (2022) 399(10340):2047–2064. 10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00478-0
14.
WalenskyRPBadenLR. The real PURPOSE of PrEP - effectiveness, not efficacy.N Engl J Med. (2024) 391(13):1246–1247. 10.1056/NEJMe2408591
15.
VenterWDFGandhiMSokhelaSSikweseKBygraveHGamaLDet al. The long wait for long-acting HIV prevention and treatment formulations.Lancet HIV. (2024) 11(10):e711–e716. 10.1016/S2352-3018(24)00173-5
16.
MaierMBwanaMEmenyonuNPepperLBangsbergDR. How to take HIV antiretroviral medications on time without a watch in rural Uganda.PLoS Med. (2006) 3(3):e161. 10.1371/journal.pmed.0030161
17.
MillsEJNachegaJBBuchanIOrbinskiJAttaranASinghSet al. Adherence to antiretroviral therapy in sub-saharan Africa and North America: a meta-analysis.JAMA. (2006) 296(6):679–690. 10.1001/jama.296.6.679
18.
KelleyB. Developing therapeutic monoclonal antibodies at pandemic pace.Nat Biotechnol. (2020) 38(5):540–545. 10.1038/s41587-020-0512-5
19.
IulianoADRoguskiKMChangHHMuscatelloDJPalekarRTempiaSet al. Estimates of global seasonal influenza-associated respiratory mortality: a modelling study. Lancet. (2018) 391(10127):1285–1300. 10.1016/S0140-6736(17)33293-2
20.
PantaleoGCorreiaBFenwickCJooVSPerezL. Antibodies to combat viral infections: development strategies and progress.Nat Rev Drug Discov. (2022) 21(9):676–696. 10.1038/s41573-022-00495-3
21.
BeigelJHOldachD. Polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies for the treatment and prevention of influenza.J Infect Dis. (2025) 232(Supplement_3):S347–S358. 10.1093/infdis/jiaf216
22.
HoCSWongCTHAungTTLakshminarayananRMehtaJSRauzSet al. Antimicrobial resistance: a concise update.Lancet Microbe. (2025) 6(1):100947. 10.1016/j.lanmic.2024.07.010
23.
CoreyL. Operation warp speed offers a roadmap for improving the efficiency of bench to bedside medical advances.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. (2025) 122(40):e2502975122. 10.1073/pnas.2502975122
24.
MSF. Untangling the Web of Antiretroviral Price Reductions. from Available online at:https://msfaccess.org/utw(Accessed February 25, 2026).
25.
WHO. Who position paper on immunization to protect infants against respiratory syncytial virus disease, may 2025.Wkly Epidemiol Rec. (2025) 22:193–218.
Summary
Keywords
access to medicines, biologics, disease prevention, essential medicines, monoclonal antibodies, pharmacoequity, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) prophylaxis, volume catalyst
Citation
Gelderblom HC, Gray G and Kelley B (2026) Breaking the sound barrier: global monoclonal antibody pharmacoequity. Front. Pediatr. 14:1845146. doi: 10.3389/fped.2026.1845146
Received
01 April 2026
Revised
13 May 2026
Accepted
25 May 2026
Published
23 June 2026
Volume
14 - 2026
Edited by
Lindsay Keir, G20 & G7 Health and Development Partnership, United Kingdom
Reviewed by
Peter J. Gardner, LifeArc, United Kingdom
Updates
Copyright
© 2026 Gelderblom, Gray and Kelley.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Huub C. Gelderblom hgelderb@fredhutch.org
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.