With the cost of some lifesaving cancer drugs exceeding $100,000 a year, more than 100 influential cancer specialists from around the world have taken the unusual step of banding together in hopes of persuading some leading pharmaceutical companies to bring prices down.

After a crash inspection program, federal regulators said Thursday that they had found numerous unsafe practices at about 30 compounding pharmacies, the same type of facility responsible for the tainted drug that caused a deadly meningitis outbreak last year.

The Food and Drug Administration approved a new drug Tuesday that not only treats a rare inherited disorder that causes extremely high cholesterol levels and heart attacks by age 30 but does so using a long-sought technology that can shut off specific genes that cause disease.

BGI, based in China, is the world’s largest genomics research institute, with 167 DNA sequencers producing the equivalent of 2,000 human genomes a day.

These mosquitoes are genetically engineered to kill — their own children.

Amgen said Monday that it had set aside $780 million to settle various federal and state investigations and whistle-blower lawsuits accusing it of illegal sales and marketing tactics.

For the last decade cancer drug developers have tried to jam the accelerators that cause tumors to grow. Now they want to block the fuel line.

People whose bodies make an unusually active form of a certain protein tend to have dangerously high levels of cholesterol. Those with an inactive form of the protein have low cholesterol and a low risk of heart attacks.