Big Pharma wants to sell cancer drugs

Where it stands:

• Merck is acquiring Peloton Therapeutics for $1 billion. 
• Eli Lilly is buying Loxo Oncology for $8 billion.
• AstraZeneca is paying Daiichi Sankyo upwards of $9 billion for partial rights to an experimental cancer treatment.
• Bristol-Myers Squibb is trying to complete a $74 billion takeover of Celgene.

And all of that is just this year's activity.

What we're watching: Array has 2 FDA-approved drugs on the market, Mektovi and Braftovi, and more in development. The drugs have high prices, and Pfizer is known for its routine price hikes — even in the face of political pressure.

• Packages of 180 Mektovi 15 mg pills, 180 Braftovi 75 mg pills and 120 Braftovi 50 mg pills each had list prices of about $11,000 when they were approved last June. Array raised those prices to $11,500 in January, according to Elsevier's Gold Standard Drug Database.

Go deeper: ACA reduced racial disparities in cancer treatment access