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Executives at drug company Actavis knew they had to move fast to avoid a plunge in sales of their top-selling drug, Namenda, a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease which would lose patent protection in July. When that happened, generic knockoffs would flood the market and doctors and pharmacists could switch patients to the lower-cost equivalents. (Appleby, 3/19)

Dr. Jeremy Greene wondered why that was the case. Why was a medicine more than 90 years old so expensive? He started looking into the history of insulin, and has published a paper about his findings in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The story of insulin, it turns out, starts back in the late 1800s. That's when scientists discovered a link between diabetes and damaged cells in the pancreas — cells that produce insulin. (Kelto, 3/19)