The Billion Dollar Molecule: One Company's Quest for the Perfect Drug PDF

Rating: (28 reviews) Author: Visit Amazon's Barry Werth Page ISBN : 9780671510572 New from $14.72 Format: PDF

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Amazon.com Review

From test tubes to the Wall Street IPO and beyond, this is the riveting true story of a start-up pharmaceutical company working to create an anti-AIDS drug. Scientifically accurate, yet written with an attention to plot, timing, dialogue, and development of character more characteristic of the best thrillers.

From Publishers Weekly

A startup pharmaceutical company is the focus of this intriguing look at the nexus of biotechnology and high finance; features a new epilogue by the author.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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• Product Details
• Table of Contents
• Reviews

• Series: A Touchstone book
• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st Touchstone Ed 1995 edition (March 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671510576
• ISBN-13: 978-0671510572
• Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 5.5 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

The Billion Dollar Molecule: One Company's Quest for the Perfect Drug PDF

This is the story of the first few years of Vertex, a bioventure that sought to create drugs that were constructed molecule by molecule - it is supposed to be "rational drug design". In exchange for allowing the company to check his work for accuracy and proprietary disclosures, Werth was admitted into the inner circle of the company, with both executives and scientists, for four years.

Werth offers masterful descriptions of both the science and the intricacies of the busisess deals. The work is similar to that of Tracy Kidder in "The Soul of a New Machine" and, in my opinion, of the same quality.

At the center of the story is Vertex's founding visionary, Joshua Boger, formerly a researcher at Merck. He reasoned that instead of screening soil samples and insect secretions in a hot or miss approach in thousands of petri dishes, he could design drugs atom by atom to bind to - and thus inactivate - molecules instrumental to the disease process. In theory, these drugs would be without side effects: because of the precision of the design, they would adhere to their target alone, allowing beneficial enzymes of other chem reactions to go on unimpeded.

Boger's first target molecule was FKBP, which he believed was a crucial agent of the immune system. By blocking it, he hoped to prevent the host's body from rejecting transplanted organs. While Boger was out raising money (eventually reaching $60 million), Vertex's researchers hunkered down to isolate and analyze FKBP, whose molecular mechanic remained poorly understood.

Unfortunately, what happened is a great example of the difficulties in marrying business to cutting-edge science: after over two years of pushing themselves to the brink of nervous collapse, Vertex scientists found difficulties with FKBP.