A week af­ter Sanofi promised to cut in­sulin prices, the phar­ma gi­ant’s non­prof­it unit is of­fer­ing more de­tails on its ef­fort to make the life-sav­ing drug and 29 oth­ers avail­able to 40 low­er-in­come coun­tries.

To­geth­er, the med­i­cines will form what Sanofi calls the Im­pact brand. They cov­er a range of dis­eases, from di­a­betes to car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease to can­cer, and are con­sid­ered es­sen­tial by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, the com­pa­ny said.

The ef­fort falls un­der Sanofi’s non­prof­it unit Sanofi Glob­al Health, which was launched just last year. Sanofi made the pledge to make 30 drugs avail­able in low­er-in­come coun­tries around the same time.

“Sanofi Glob­al Health aims to im­prove the lives of mil­lions of peo­ple who now can­not get the help they need. Sanofi’s re­newed pur­pose is to chase the mir­a­cles of sci­ence to im­prove peo­ple’s lives. And our quest to make life bet­ter for all peo­ple must in­clude help­ing to pro­vide bet­ter ac­cess to care and qual­i­ty med­i­cines for un­der­served pop­u­la­tions,” CEO Paul Hud­son said in a state­ment.

The type 2 di­a­betes treat­ment gliben­clamide and chemother­a­py ox­ali­platin are al­so on the list, ac­cord­ing to Sanofi.

In ad­di­tion to the med­i­cines, Sanofi is es­tab­lish­ing an Im­pact fund to sup­port star­tups look­ing for sus­tain­able health­care so­lu­tions in un­der­served re­gions by of­fer­ing fi­nanc­ing and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance. The phar­ma gi­ant is get­ting the ball rolling with $25 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to a Reuters re­port.

“We know that we can­not do this alone, and so we are build­ing part­ner­ships at glob­al, re­gion­al and lo­cal lev­els that will help to im­prove and es­tab­lish health sys­tems to reach our goal of a health­i­er, more re­silient world,” Jon Fairest, head of Sanofi Glob­al Health, said in the state­ment.

Last Wednes­day, Sanofi an­nounced that it would cut the month­ly price of its in­sulins for unin­sured Amer­i­cans from $99 down to $35. The move fol­lows the House pas­sage of a month­ly cap back in March, which just 12 Re­pub­li­cans sup­port­ed.

This sto­ry has been up­dat­ed to clar­i­fy that Sanofi made its ini­tial pledge last year.

The Federal Trade Commission has gotten involved in a patent feud over Supernus’ Parkinson’s drug Apokyn, a case the agency said may have ‘‘significant implications” for patients who rely on the drug.

Sage Chemical won the first generic approval for its Apokyn formulation (also known as apomorphine hydrochloride injection) back in 2022. The non-ergoline dopamine agonist is approved to treat Parkinson’s symptoms during “off episodes,” such as difficulty moving, tremors and intense cramping. However, regulators specified that the approval pertained to the generic drug cartridges only, not the injector pen required for administration.

The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) last year sought to find ways to better coordinate large-scale clinical trials in the US — as the UK lead by example during the pandemic — especially for these emergency clinical trials.

The lobbying group PhRMA Tuesday called for more clinical trial diversity in underserved areas, including by making participation less of a burden, and expanding eligibility criteria when appropriate.

The Brussels-based European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) this morning called on the European Commission to ensure that it adequately assesses how its re-writing of the 20+-year-old pharma legislation, which is due to be released before the end of the month, damages the competitiveness of the pharma industry.

EFPIA’s opposition to the changes has lingered since the beginning, and its latest estimate is that the rewritten legislation could cost the industry €640 million ($688 million).