Pharmaceutical company Cipla Limited (BSE:500087) (NSE:CIPLA EQ) on Wednesday launched a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Gilead Sciences Inc for the manufacturing and the distribution of the investigational medicine Remdesivir to treat COVID-19 patients under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the US FDA.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cipla has received the manufacturing rights to the Remdesivir API and Finished product and allowed to market the product in 127 countries including India and South Africa under its own brand name. It will receive the manufacturing know-how from Gilead Sciences Inc to manufacture the API and Finished product at a commercial scale.

Cipla's extensive geographical and commercial footprint will help make this therapy accessible to more patients and markets. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO)'s tracker, the number of reported COVID-19 cases has crossed the 4m mark globally.

The FDA's EUA will facilitate broader use of Remdesivir to treat hospitalized patients with severe symptoms of COVID-19 based on available data from two global clinical trials, US National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases' placebo-controlled Phase 3 study in patients with moderate to severe symptoms of COVID-19 and Gilead's global Phase 3 study evaluating Remdesivir in patients with severe disease. Multiple additional clinical trials are ongoing to generate more data on the safety and efficacy of Remdesivir as a potential treatment.