“One of the signs of a great society is the diligence with which it passes culture from one generation to the next." Winston Churchill
So I was going through my basement for some old fashion paperbacks and found this 1994 gem about the extremely intriguing gray area at the nexus of drug development and high finance.
Written by journalist Barry Werth, "The Billion Dollar Molecule" examined the early years of Vertex, a 35 year old biotech firm founded by Josh Boger. Barry’s 2014 book, The Antidote, chronicled Vertex development over the following two decades.
Josh left Merck when Merck was one of the most admired pharmaceutical companies in America. Like most big pharma companies, Merck has lost touch with its drug discovery roots. It became a financial portfolio investment fund involved in mergers and acquisitions.
Josh founded Vertex as a Virtual Pharmaceutical Company (VPC) with a creative DNA and a commitment to discovering important new products for people with serious unmet medical needs.
I went back upstairs, sat in front of my computer screen, checked $VRTX, and found that it was valued at $130 billion, on that day.
More than 1,000 drug development companies have been formed over the past 20 years. Most of them started as virtual pharmaceutical companies pursuing a single drug discovery. Many of them did not make it. The failure rate is super high, but so are the rewards.
One needs to have a well-thought-out strategy in order to improve chances of success in this high entry barriers space. That's why we decided to start this mastermind network with a focus on the US Pharmaceutical Market.
You are most welcome to join!
