Vertex Pharmaceuticals
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| Type | Corporation (NASDAQ: VRTX) |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1989 |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| Key people | Matthew Emmens, President, CEO; |
| Products | Product Pipeline |
| Revenue |  $250 million USD (2006) |
| Website | www.vrtx.com |
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 Kevin Kinsella and Larry Bock of Avalon Ventures and Gary Aronson. Kevin, Larry and Gary recruited Joshua Boger from Merck Pharmaceuticals. Joshua Boger retired in 2009.[1] 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, England. The company's beginnings were profiled by Barry Werth in the 1994 book "The Billion-Dollar Molecule".
In November 2010, Vertex Pharmaceuticals completed its first New Drug Application (NDA) under its own name for the drug Telaprevir, a novel oral treatment of Hepatitis C. Development and commercialization of Telaprevir is shared with Johnson & Johnson for European distribution and Mitsubishi for the far east. Telaprevir, a protease inhibitor, is the first in this class to reach NDA status, ahead of Merck's boceprevir.
In April 2011, WCBS NewsRadio 880 advertisements announcing a nurse hotline and http://www.bettertoknowc.com/ for hepatitis C information have began airing in the New York Metro area. On May 23, 2011 the FDA approved telaprevir, a direct acting antiviral drug (DAA) to treat hepatitis C (HCV) [2]
As of April 2009, the company had about 1,800 employees, 1,200 of which were in the Boston area.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Rearranging the Corporate DNA, Boston Sunday Globe, April 24, 2011. page G1
- ^ http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ByAudience/ForPatientAdvocates/ucm256328.htm
- "Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated homesite". 2004 Annual Report. http://www.vrtx.com/. Retrieved 18 May 2004.
- "Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated press release". http://investors.vrtx.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=532555. Retrieved 06 Dec 2010.
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