Sanders and AOC have condemned a pharma company, Gilead, for applying to extend the patent on a drug combination called Descovy, which is used for treating AIDS.

They accuse the company of delaying development of Descovy so that the patent would start later and thus end later.

Based on information from Wikipedia it appears that the company's business is more mergers and acquisitions than research as such. Its founder seems to be in the VC field rather than medical research.

The amount of development needed for such a drug combination is little. It seems to be mainly a matter of testing the effects of combining drugs already approved.

Corporate-funded clinical tests of drugs are suspect anyway, so the government should fund them. Therefore, even if we continue to allow patents on drugs, which I think we should not, we should at least disallow patents on combinations.