How Merck uses patents to help maintain Keytruda’s exorbitant price; International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, April 13, 2026

 Denise Ajiri and Antonio Cucho Gamboa, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists ; How Merck uses patents to help maintain Keytruda’s exorbitant price

"Merck’s original patents for Keytruda are set to expire in 2028. But Merck, using a strategy known as “evergreening,” has filed hundreds of additional patents that could protect Keytruda’s dominance well beyond that year.

ICIJ analyzed 180 U.S. patent applications related to Keytruda, provided by the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK), a nonprofit that examines inequities in the patent system. These were linked to 1,032 additional patent filings around the world tied to the drug. From this universe, ICIJ identified active U.S. patents that illustrate Merck’s strategy of maintaining market exclusivity.

Patents can have different status, including active, pending, abandoned, expired, or others. Explore Merck’s active U.S. Keytruda patents below."

Henrietta Lacks’s Family Settles Suit With Novartis Over Use of Her Cells; The New York Times, February 27, 2026

 Michael Levenson , The New York Times; Henrietta Lacks’s Family Settles Suit With Novartis Over Use of Her Cells

"The pharmaceutical giant Novartis has reached a settlement with the family of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman whose cells were taken from her without her consent in 1951, when she was dying of cervical cancer in a segregated ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Ms. Lacks’s cells were the first to reproduce in a laboratory, outside the human body, and have been used in groundbreaking research, including to develop vaccines for polio and Covid-19 and treatments for cancer, Parkinson’s and the flu. The National Institutes of Health found the use of her cells, which were known as HeLa cells, was cited more than 110,000 times in scientific publications between 1953 and 2018.

In August 2024, more than 70 years after Ms. Lacks died at age 31 and was buried in an unmarked grave, her family filed a federal lawsuit in Maryland that accused Novartis, which is based in Switzerland, of amassing substantial profits through the use of the HeLa cell line."

Eli Lilly Reaches $1 Trillion in Value, Buoyed by Demand for Its Weight Loss Drugs; The New York Times, November 21, 2025

Rebecca Robbins , The New York Times; Eli Lilly Reaches $1 Trillion in Value, Buoyed by Demand for Its Weight Loss Drugs

"Pharmaceuticals is a notoriously cyclical business. Companies buoyed by once-in-a-generation product lines flounder after their blockbuster drugs lose patent protection."

Big pharma executives mocked ‘pillbillies’ in emails, West Virginia opioid trial hears; The Guardian, May 16, 2021

Chris McGreal, The Guardian; Big pharma executives mocked ‘pillbillies’ in emails, West Virginia opioid trial hears

"Paul Farrell, a lawyer for a West Virginia county, put it to the executive that the emails reflected a culture of contempt."

Members Of Congress Rip Into Mylan CEO; Huffington Post, 9/21/16

Lauren Weber, Huffington Post; Members Of Congress Rip Into Mylan CEO:

"“To have companies like yours take advantage of the situation, take advantage of these people who are really in need of this medication, I think it speaks to something that we are better than that,” Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) said. “How did we get to this point that we have a culture like this in corporate America that wants to stick it to consumers?”...

Cummings emphasized his disgust that pharmaceutical companies would continue to ratchet up drug prices for life-saving medication and said he hoped Bresch would apologize. She did not.

“After Mylan takes our punches, they’ll fly back to their mansions in their private jets and laugh all the way to the bank while our constituents suffer, file for bankruptcy, and watch their children get sicker and die,” Cummings said. “It’s time for Congress to act.”"