Free The Antidote: Inside the World of New Pharma by Barry Werth Page A

fragments were painstakingly compared with all known human and microbial DNA until a new viral entity was identified. When Houghton’s group finally convinced themselves and the scientific world that they had the right collection of virus proteins, Chiron claimed an estate of more than one hundred patents, staking out a vast commercial territory. Any company developing a diagnostic test or a new drug targeting HCV needed to license Chiron’s patents, for which it typically charged millions of dollars in licensing fees during R&D alone, and made millions more each year in product royalties.
    Vertex and Lilly refused to accept Chiron’s terms. “We invited them to sue us,” Boger says, explaining how in July Chiron filed suit against Lilly and Vertex, alleging patent infringement.
    We didn’t think their patents were valid, so we weren’t trespassers on their property—we just didn’t think it was their property. I can say that they have acted outrageously in the field. I don’t think there’s any doubt—and I think you could get a hundred people outside of Vertex to agree—Chiron retarded research in the hepatitis C field by their actions. And that’s not the purpose of patent law. They went around bullying people, and they scared people away from the field. And people who wouldn’t pay their extortion-level demands just got out of the field. I’d have some modest sympathy for them, even if I disagreed with their property rights, if they had a program, but they never did. They basically sat back with their piece of paper and said, “We’re not going to lift a finger for patients with hepatitis C, we just want a piece of your efforts.” And I just find that an outrageous abuse of the patent system.
    Indignation, Boger knew, is a friend, especially to an underdog. Vertex pressed ahead against HCV. Tung and the chemists begandeveloping new scaffolds and “warheads”—chemical groups that seek and bind to specific subareas of the active site—against the protease. Kwong and her colleagues jump-started projects in polymerase and helicase. A month later, Vertex signed a deal with German pharmaceutical maker Schering A.G. to develop drugs to help regenerate nerves damaged by neurological diseases: $28 million up front over five years, plus milestone payments of $60 million. In October, Vertex and HMR announced that they had begun signing up patients for the first clinical trial for an orally administered small-molecule inhibitor of ICE, VX-740. First in humans with a new pill designed with atomic precision against an untested but highly promising target, and with a strong global partner and US commercial rights, Boger was right where he wanted to be.

    Boger intended Vertex to innovate at every level, in every function. As the company began to brand itself as the new name in AIDS medicines, its direct-to-consumer advertising grabbed attention. Almost a year before it expected to receive approval, it wheat-pasted posters in downtown neighborhoods nationwide alongside pitches for Lilith Fair and Levi’s that screamed “Selling Hope Is Easy in an Epidemic” and “Ambition Will Cure AIDS Before Compassion Does.” One ad appropriated the Silence = Death symbol of ACT UP, the militant patient-advocacy group that led the protests over AZT. Another featured the NAMES quilt, the survivor community’s tribute to its beloved dead. Bart Henderson, Vertex’s chief of marketing, explained that the ads were meant to get people talking about the need to “push beyond the status quo to develop better drugs.” Merck’s ads for Crixivan showed, by comparison, an African-American man climbing a mountain, reaching the summit, and gazing at the view below. Its headline: “In the Battle Against HIV, There’s a Change in Outlook.”
    Boger wasn’t just promoting a drug; he was promoting ambition as a superior virtue. Radical improvement—and the drive and tenacity to make it happen—was Vertex’s paramount value. Boger