jueves, 24 de octubre de 2019

How Vertex went from the verge to the vanguard

The Readout
Damian Garde

How Vertex went from the verge to the vanguard

This week, Vertex Pharmaceuticals reached a rarefied milestone, winning approval for its fourth treatment for cystic fibrosis and giving it a medicine to treat nearly 90% of patients with the genetic disease.

The company’s success was hardly assured. Back in 2012, Vertex had leaky offices and a shaky business model, about to get pushed out of the hepatitis C market by curative treatments on the rise. As STAT’s Adam Feuerstein and Matthew Herper report, Vertex’s choice to bet the company on a precision approach to cystic fibrosis was inherently risky, as “there were like 14 things that had to go right,” as Dr. David Altshuler, the company’s chief scientific officer, put it.

Seven years later, Vertex has gone from being able to treat a handful of cystic fibrosis patients to having a product for the vast majority of them. “That’s historic,” CEO Dr. Jeffrey Leiden said. “It’s never been done in the industry before.”

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