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French drug giant Sanofi SA is betting that a biotech partnership named after a Star Trek premise will help it crack one of the biggest mysteries in pharmaceutical research: molecules that drive diseases, including some cancers, that have been considered “undruggable” because of their shape. Four-and-a-half years in, Sanofi now believes its partnership, Warp Drive Bio, is close to getting its first new drug candidate. But the path has been painful. The venture has gone through three CEOs, two organizational structures, dizzying shifts in priorities—and so far, no marketable products. (Rockoff, 12/6)

Global spending on pharmaceuticals is forecast to reach $1.5 trillion by 2021, a whopping 32 percent increase from expected spending this year. Even so, the year-on-year rate of increase is expected to be less than it has been in the recent past, when new, high-priced medicines for treating hepatitis C and some cancers prompted a huge uptick in demand. Indeed, overall spending will rise nearly 1.5 times faster between 2017 and 2021 than between 2012 and 2016, growing by $367 billion compared with $148 billion. But spending is forecast to drop 9 percent in 2016 from the past two years, which represented nearly unprecedented spending growth, and reach anywhere from 4 percent to 7 percent, on a compounded annual basis, between now and 2021. (Silverman, 12/6)

Global spending on prescription medicines will reach nearly $1.5 trillion by 2021, although the annual rate of growth will decrease from recent years, according to a forecast by Quintiles IMS Holding released on Tuesday. That figure, based on wholesale pricing, is up nearly $370 billion from estimated 2016 spending. The United States will account for up to $675 billion of the $1.5 trillion. (Berkrot, 12/6)

Pfizer Inc. has been fined £84.2 million ($106.7 million) by the U.K.’s competition regulator for charging the country’s National Health Service excessively high prices for an anti-epilepsy drug. The Competition and Markets Authority said Wednesday that Pfizer and drug distribution company Flynn Pharma broke competition law by charging unfair prices in the U.K. for phenytoin sodium capsules, an anti-epilepsy drug used by around 48,000 patients in the country. (Roland, 12/7)

British regulators have fined U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and distributor Flynn Pharma almost 90 million pounds ($114.6 million) for increasing the cost of an epilepsy drug by as much as 2,600 percent.The Competition and Markets Authority says Pfizer and Flynn Pharma broke competition law by charging "excessive and unfair prices" for the drug used by some 48,000 people in Britain. Pfizer was fined 84.2 million pounds ($106 million) and Flynn Pharma 5.2 million pounds. (Kirka, 12/7)

Novo Nordisk A/S has pledged to limit price increases in the U.S. for its drugs, acknowledging that many diabetes patients struggle to afford its products. Jakob Riis, Novo’s U.S. chief, said the company would limit future increases in list prices of its drugs to no more than single-digit percentages annually. He made the pledge in an article posted on the company’s website last week. (Roland, 12/6)

With drug companies under fire over high prices, the world’s largest insulin maker plans to limit increases and join competitors by introducing a model that ties the cost of medicines to the results they deliver. Novo Nordisk A/S expects to make prices dependent on achieving certain outcomes or promising benefits to patients, Chief Executive Officer Lars Rebien Sorensen said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Bagsvaerd, Denmark. That type of pricing should play a bigger role in contract negotiations with purchasers starting early next year, he said. (Paton, 12/5)

Imagine not being able to afford one of life's great pleasures — sex. That's true for many older couples, doctors say. Soaring prices for prescription medicines for impotence and other problems have put the remedies out of reach for some. Without insurance coverage, Viagra and Cialis cost about $50 a pill, triple their 2010 list prices. (Johnson, 12/5)

Horizon Pharma charges more than $2,000 for a month’s supply of a prescription pain reliever that is the combination of two cheap drugs available separately over the counter. Another company, Novum, sells a small tube of a prescription skin rash cream, containing two inexpensive decades-old medicines, for nearly $8,000. What is key to the companies’ business plan of raising prices by 1,000% or more? (Petersen, 12/5)

The U.S. government has written to a senior aide of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, calling on Tokyo to reconsider a plan that would allow more frequent pharmaceutical price cuts.The letter from Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker describes how the U.S. is “disappointed” by the Japanese plan to reduce drug prices. Tokyo’s policies “raise serious concerns about the incentive structure for health-care products, as well as about the market’s predictability and transparency,” it said. (Warnock and Fujikawa, 12/6)

The United States is exceptional in that it does not regulate or negotiate the prices of new prescription drugs when they come onto market. Other countries will task a government agency to meet with pharmaceutical companies and haggle over an appropriate price. These agencies will typically make decisions about whether these new drugs represent any improvement over the old drugs — whether they’re even worth bringing onto the market in the first place. They’ll pore over reams of evidence about drugs’ risks and benefits. The United States allows drugmakers to set their own prices for a given product — and allows every drug that's proven to be safe come onto market. (Kliff, 11/30)

Eli Lilly’s aggressive Taltz DTC advertising seems to be giving the new-to-market drug a boost in the next-generation psoriasis drug battle against Novartis' Cosentyx. While analyst Lynn Price was careful to note that Taltz and Cosentyx market share should eventually stabilize, a new report from her firm Spherix Global Insights indicates the Taltz DTC campaign is having an early impact on uptake of the drug. (Bulik, 12/2)