Loophole in Patent Law Brings ‘Miracle Drug’ to Patients Who Can’t Afford It; The New York Times, June 22, 2026

Stephanie Nolen, The New York Times; Loophole in Patent Law Brings ‘Miracle Drug’ to Patients Who Can’t Afford It

A generic version of a breakthrough cystic fibrosis drug, manufactured in Bangladesh for a fraction of the American price, may give some families around the world an unlikely lifeline. 

"Now a Bangladeshi company has reverse engineered Trikafta and is using a loophole in global patent law to sell its version, called Triko, for a fraction of Vertex’s price.

Last week, the Lotterings joined a small group of other cystic fibrosis patients and their families who traveled to Dhaka to buy the first boxes of Triko that rolled off the production line of Beximco Pharmaceuticals.

Heather Nichols, a spokeswoman for Vertex, said that Trikafta is available in 75 countries — through sales or donations — and that the company provides it free in 15 countries; more than 7,000 people have received it at no charge.

But there are thousands more patients not covered by those programs, who have tried a variety of strategies to get the drug, including taking Vertex to court and petitioning their governments to allow a generic version of the drug to be imported or made locally, under a process known as compulsory licensing."

Anthropic and the Gates Foundation are teaming up on a $200 million AI push for global health; Quartz, May 14, 2026

 

Cris Tolomia , Quartz; Anthropic and the Gates Foundation are teaming up on a $200 million AI push for global health

"Anthropic and the Gates Foundation are committing $200 million over four years to deploy AI across global health, education, and economic mobility programs, the organizations said on Thursday.

Under the terms of the arrangement, the Gates Foundation will bring grant funding, program design, and expertise, while Anthropic's contribution takes the form of Claude AI usage credits and support from its technical staff, Reuters reported. Anthropic said the partnership is central to its efforts to extend AI's benefits in areas where markets alone will not.

The largest portion of the funding will focus on improving health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries, where about 4.6 billion people lack access to essential health services, Anthropic said. Specific initiatives include using Claude to screen potential drug and vaccine candidates for neglected diseases such as polio, HPV, and eclampsia, as well as working with the Gates Foundation's Institute for Disease Modeling to improve forecasts for where treatments for diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis are deployed."

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."

Pitt School of Medicine Student Innovator is Empowering People to Take Charge of Their Healthcare; University of Pittsburgh Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship, October 21, 2025

KAREN WOOLSTRUM , University of Pittsburgh Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship; Pitt School of Medicine Student Innovator is Empowering People to Take Charge of Their Healthcare

"Inspiration Strikes in the ER

While her research focuses on cystic fibrosis, Li’s entrepreneurial journey began during a rotation in the emergency room. It dawned on her that many patients in the ER could be empowered to take control of their own health monitoring and potentially avoid traumatic and costly ER visits. She quickly devised an idea for an electronic stethoscope that people can use to measure vital signs of the heart and lungs from home.

In collaboration with a friend, Akshaya Anand, a machine-learning graduate student from the University of Maryland, she founded Korion Health and entered the 2022 Randall Family Big Idea Competition hosted by the Big Idea Center, Pitt’s hub for student innovation (part of the OIE).

They were awarded a modest $2,000 4th-place prize, but the value they received from the month-long competition and mentorship extended far beyond that. The experience of crafting her pitch and having her idea validated in the eyes of experienced entrepreneurs gave her the confidence to continue pursuing the device’s commercial potential.

Next up was a pitch competition hosted by the Product Development Managers Association (PDMA) in which she won free first place in the graduate-student category, with the award including consulting hours from local companies such as Bally Design and Lexicon Design that she said “helped me take my half-baked idea and turn it into a prototype to show to investors.”

“This was a high yield for the effort. If it’s something they can hold in their hands it really helps communicate the value proposition,” she added.

From there, things began to snowball. On the same day that she won the UpPrize Social Innovation Competition sponsored by Bank of New York in the racial equity category ($75k), she won the first place prize from the American Heart Association’s EmPOWERED to Serve Business Accelerator ($50k). The resulting publicity attracted the attention of organizers of the Hult Prize Competition, a global student startup competition that receives thousands of applicants each year, who invited her to apply.

“I didn’t know anything about the Hult Prize competition. At first, I thought it was spam,” she admitted.

She had no illusions of advancing to the finals near London, let alone winning the top prize of $1 million: until she did."

Gilead Agrees to Allow Generic Version of Groundbreaking H.I.V. Shot in Poor Countries; The New York Times, October 2, 2024

Stephanie Nolen , The New York Times; Gilead Agrees to Allow Generic Version of Groundbreaking H.I.V. Shot in Poor Countries

"The drugmaker Gilead Sciences on Wednesday announced a plan to allow six generic pharmaceutical companies in Asia and North Africa to make and sell at a lower price its groundbreaking drug lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injection that provides near-total protection from infection with H.I.V.

Those companies will be permitted to sell the drug in 120 countries, including all the countries with the highest rates of H.I.V., which are in sub-Saharan Africa. Gilead will not charge the generic drugmakers for the licenses.

Gilead says the deal, made just weeks after clinical trial results showed how well the drug works, will provide rapid and broad access to a medication that has the potential to end the decades-long H.I.V. pandemic.

But the deal leaves out most middle- and high-income countries — including Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, China and Russia — that together account for about 20 percent of new H.I.V. infections. Gilead will sell its version of the drug in those countries at higher prices. The omission reflects a widening gulf in health care access that is increasingly isolating the people in the middle."