From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vertex Pharmaceuticals is a biotechnology company with activities spanning the length of the pharmaceutical product pipeline, from target identification through to clinical trials and marketing. Most of its activity has been in collaboration with much larger pharmaceutical firms, though some of its recent work has been done independently. Vertex was founded in 1989 by Josh Boger, one of the main reasons for the company's success. He was an outstanding fund-raiser and was able to manage the company's cash flow very well. Vertex was one of the first biotech firms to use an explicit strategy of rational drug design rather than combinatorial chemistry. Vertex went about understanding a disease and then tried to develop a process to cure it. In 2004, its product pipeline focused on viral infections, inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, and cancer. Its capital investments include a headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and two research facilities, in San Diego, California, and Oxford, United Kingdom. The company's beginnings were profiled by Barry Werth in the 1994 book Billion Dollar Molecule''.
[edit] References
