13 Facts About Vertex Pharmaceuticals

Vertex Pharmaceuticals is an American biopharmaceutical company based in Boston, Massachusetts.

In January 2014, Vertex Pharmaceuticals completed its move from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Boston, Massachusetts, and took residence in a new, $800 million complex.

On 23 January 2019, Ian Smith, the COO and interim CFO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, was terminated from his position for undisclosed personal behavior that violated established company code of conduct rules.

On 31 January 2012, Vertex Pharmaceuticals gained FDA approval of the first drug, Kalydeco, to treat the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis rather than the symptoms, in patients 6 years or older who have the G551D gene mutation.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals studied ivacaftor in combination with another drug for the most common mutation in cystic fibrosis (CF), known as F508del, and published the first set of results in 2012.

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Vertex Pharmaceuticals produced the drug after 13 years of research and development, with $70 million in support from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

On 5 November 2014 Vertex Pharmaceuticals announced the submission of a New Drug Application to the FDA for a fully co-formulated combination of lumacaftor and ivacaftor for people with cystic fibrosis ages 12 and older who have two copies of the F508del mutation in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene.

On 28 March 2017, Vertex Pharmaceuticals announced Phase 3 data from a dual combination treatment, tezacaftor plus ivacaftor, in patients with cystic fibrosis.

In 2016, Vertex Pharmaceuticals began developing a new group of CFTR modulators in combination with tezacaftor and ivacaftor.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals shareholders opted for a reduction in CEO compensation in 2015 and 2016, resulting in 2016 earnings of US$17.

Criticism of Vertex Pharmaceuticals-based around claims that the pricing of their groundbreaking cystic fibrosis drug Orkambi, limited access to the drug for children and young adults with cystic fibrosis, resulted in campaigns by concerned parent groups and allegations of unfair pricing by the UK's National Health Service.

In March 2019, Vertex Pharmaceuticals was legally required to destroy 7, 880 packs of Orkambi that reached their expiry dates during negotiations with the NHS concerning the drug's pricing.

The funding agreement was finalized soon after Vertex Pharmaceuticals signed reimbursement deals elsewhere, including NHS Scotland, Spain and Australia.