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

You will be hooked from start to finish, as you go from the labs, where obsessive, fiercely competitive scientists struggle for a breakthrough, to Wall Street, where the wheeling and dealing takes on a life of its own, as Boger courts investors and finally decides to take Vertex public. Here is a fascinating no-holds-barred account of the business of science, which includes an updated epilogue about the most recent developments in the quest for a drug to cure AIDS.

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.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

No time to breathe! What a thrilling story!, 2008-11-26
Barry Werth has revealed it all for the public - the inside story of the making of Vertex, a fledgling pharmaceutical start-up (which has now achieved much-deserved success and glory). Werth goes to the extent of discussing each individual's feelings and thoughts (anguish) in candid detail. The story is an adrenaline rush; expect to reach for a few extra cups of coffee while reading this book. The main players are from Harvard, Yale, Merck, the best of the best and all workaholics to the extreme. As the story - the rush to the finish-line - unfolds, you realize that Dr. Joshua Boger, is truly a brilliant, gifted man - both a scholarly researcher and a precocious businessman with a fantastic presence of mind. What's even more breath-taking is that the entire story is true - the toil, the sweat, the despair, the triumph. I enjoyed every minute while reading this book. I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone who has a degree in the biomedical sciences.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Great Story and Case Study, 2007-11-13
"The Billion Dollar Molecule" is a great story on its own merits. The facts that the book (a) is based on real life, (b) offers important lessons about business and entrepreneurship and (c) provides a good overview of the pharmaceutical field are just additional incentives to read this excellent publication.

Filled with clear and well-drawn characters, spanning landscapes from the research laboratory to Wall Street, this is a book well worth reading.

Highly recommended.


0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Good book, 2007-05-15
The book describes the journey of one small biotech startup complany toward the end of the age of biotech startup companies. Its a good book if you are thinking of starting a biotech, or just think the idea is cool. This book will teach you a little about what it takes to be successfull.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

A fly-on-the-wall view of a start-up, 2006-02-18
I thought this book was a really interesting insight into what it takes to start a drug company. Being a grad student in biology, I'm definitely open to non-conventional academic options and I read this book because of that. Thrilling and well-written, Barry Werth gave an intimate account of the gruelling process of starting an independent drug company. The narrative got rather boring at times, but overall it's a worthwhile read.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Insightful, 2005-05-05
This epic give an in-depth account of the creation of Vertex, a company formed with the hope of creating perfect drugs molecule by molecule. Such drugs would be free of side effects and worth billions. It follows the first few years of this business and Werth tells the story of the three founders and their struggles to break their product into the market, while having a viable product to sell. This cunning work demonstrates how wealth can be created through science, and how new business' can attempt make a profit.

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