The Billion Dollar Molecule | The Startup That Tried to Schedule Scientific Discovery

The Book Brief Project · Jul 8, 2026 · 11m

The Billion-Dollar Molecule begins with a question every biotechnology company eventually has to confront: can scientific discovery be turned into a schedule? Barry Werth follows the early years of Vertex Pharmaceuticals as scientists, executives and investors attempt to build a business around research whose most important breakthroughs cannot be promised in advance.At the center is Joshua Boger and his attempt to create a different kind of pharmaceutical company — one built around rational drug design and the belief that understanding molecules at a deeper level could make drug discovery…