The Antidote

Werth, author and journalist, offers this sequel to The Billion-Dollar Molecule (1994), on the founding of the pharmaceutical company Vertex. Joshua Boger, founding scientist and president, along with a group of young scientists, set out in a garage to overtake the big drug companies. The author returns to Vertex to learn what it takes to succeed in science and business and sees that 22 years later and at about four times the anticipated cost, Vertex is now set to achieve Boger’s initial goals: “Make better drugs, faster. Create the 21st century biopharmaceutical company. Become Merck, only better.” Werth seeks to discover what Boger’s vision has become and considers if it is a road map toward “a new biological epoch.” We learn that “all progress in the pharmaceutical business is backbreaking, freighted with unknowns, and takes twice as long as you think it will.” Now Vertex has nearly 2,000 employees, and it is about to debut the company’s first drugs discovered and developed internally and commercialized under its own label. --Mary Whaley