• The Billion Dollar Molecule

  • One Company's Quest for the Perfect Drug
  • By: Barry Werth
  • Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby
  • Length: 18 hrs and 25 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (24 ratings)

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The Billion Dollar Molecule  By  cover art

The Billion Dollar Molecule

By: Barry Werth
Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby
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Publisher's summary

Join journalist Barry Werth as he pulls back the curtain on Vertex, a start-up pharmaceutical company, and witness firsthand the intense drama being played out in the pioneering and hugely profitable field of drug research.

Founded by Joshua Boger, a dynamic Harvard- and Merck-trained scientific whiz kid, Vertex is dedicated to designing - atom by atom - both a new life-saving immunosuppressant drug and a drug to combat the virus that causes AIDS.

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 that includes an updated epilogue about the most recent developments in the quest for a drug to cure AIDS.

©1994 Barry Werth; Introduction copyright 2014 by Barry Werth (P)2021 Tantor

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Book is interesting but narrator is not

Nothing against the author but it was really hard for me to stay engaged with the narrator. I would find myself spacing out consistently which would detract from the story because of the performance. Because of this I returned the book

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