Priti Krishtel

Priti Krishtel is a lawyer and advocate for patent reform and increased public participation in the patent system. She co-founded the United States-based nonprofit organization the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge.

She is a media contributor for national and international news outlets, a MacArthur Fellow, a TED speaker, and a Presidential Leadership Scholar.

Early life and education Krishtel grew up in California. She obtained her undergraduate degree from University of California, Berkeley, and her Juris Doctor degree from the New York University School of Law.

Media In 2018, Krishtel stated that public enthusiasm for intellectual property rights reform is at an all-time high due to concerns around the rising costs of prescription drugs. In 2020 she pointed to research showing no correlation between high drug prices and increased pharmaceutical research and development. She has said that many medicinal patent applications, rather than being for new medicinal formulas, are minor tweaks to drug administration regimes or processes. In the same year, she joined global health advocates in calling for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and tests through sharing intellectual property and know-how to increase supply and access.

Krishtel has called out the danger of vaccine nationalism, or the hoarding of vaccine supply by any country, and warned that the prioritization of vaccines for American citizens or other high-income countries could be "the beginning of a new Hunger Games" where populations are pitted against each other to get access to treatments and vaccines if measures were not taken. In 2021, she stated that intellectual property law reform alone would not be enough to improve access to COVID-19 vaccines and that technology transfer was also needed.

Responding to criticism of the technology transfer argument in which it was said that local manufacturing of vaccines increased safety risks, she told CBS News that such defenses of the status quo were patronizing and racist assumptions grounded in the false perspective that low-income countries lacked manufacturing capacity and a safety regulatory framework.

In an interview with Amanpour & Company on PBS regarding COVID-19 vaccine access, she noted that everyone should have access to vaccines. This sentiment was echoed in an op-ed she co-authored with Chelsea Clinton in USA Today on the need to vaccinate the world to stop the spread of further variants, stating, "Nobody is safe until we are all safe."

In 2021, Krishtel joined the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives at a press conference and noted the importance of addressing patent and other anti-competitive abuses as part of the response to lowering healthcare costs during a legislative effort on drug pricing. She is quoted in the New York Times editorial board opinion in April 2022 supporting patent reform.

Awards and recognition Krishtel is a TED speaker, Presidential Leadership Scholar, and an Ashoka fellow. She is an Echoing Green Fellow and received the Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award from NYU's School of Law in 2022. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022.