Big Pharma has a great opportunity here to rebuilt some of its obliterated credibility.
But no, they gotta screw the terminally ill patients.
Smooth move, ex-lax.
There is a YouTube series by a Dr. Tour who is a synthetic chemist. He is explaining how difficult abiogenesis is, i.e. getting life from non-living chemicals. However, in doing so he makes it clear that building even simple molecules from scratch can require a number of complicated steps each with low yield. I could see how some medicines could be quite expensive if the development process is new and the demand is low.