After publicly chastisting the pharmaceutical industry for failing to partipicate in the Medicines Patent Pool, which is an initiative designed to streamline patent licensing for producing generics of patented HIV neds and lower prices in poor countries, several drugmakers are now holding talks about licensing arrangements.

Among those in negotiations are Gilead Sciences, Sequoia Pharmaceuticals and ViiV Healthcare, a joint venture between Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, according to a statement from MPP, which adds that Roche is about to do the same. Non-committal replies, however, were received from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott Laboratories and Boehringer-Ingelheim, while Merck rejected any arrangement.

The responses come after MPP, which received a boost when the National Institutes for Health licensed a med to the organiziation (see here), released letters written to drugmakers - big and small - that make HIV/AIDS meds and upbraided them for failing to participate. The MPP then asked for replies by January 31 (you can read the correspondence here).

Perhaps the big surprise, so far, is that ViiV has agreed to negotiate, given that Glaxo ceo Andrew Witty has previously indicated the venture would likely pursue other ways to provide HIV meds to poor countries. At the same time, Johnson & Johnson’s Tibotec unit has not agreed to negotiate and recently struck a separate licensing deal that some interpreted as a way to undermine the MPP (read this).

“This represents great progress in pioneering a model that works for companies and for patients who need access to new and better medicines,” Ellen ‘t Hoen, executive director of the Medicines Patent Pool, says in a statement. “But we need other patent holders to engage with the Pool, too. It is only through conversation that we can work through differences and achieve critical public health goals.”