When she gave a recent talk at Vertex, Dr. Sylvestre's first slide showed a man in a suit, meant to be a Vertex executive, with his head in the sand.
In a midstage trial in the United States of 250 previously untreated patients, 61percentt of the people who received telaprevir in addition to the two standard drugs had no detectable virus in their blood 24 weeks after the end of the treatment, a Vertex executive said.
Employees felt "part of this mission," says Vertex Chief Executive Joshua Boger.
"These data did exceed our expectations," Vertex's chief executive, Jeffrey Leiden, told analysts during a conference call.
Joshua S. Boger, Vertex's chief executive, said the drug offered the possibility of a three-month cure for hepatitis C, an infection caused by the hepatitis C virus with no adverse side effects.
Joshua S. Boger, the chief executive of Vertex, said his biotechnology company was organized from scratch to take advantage of new technologies.
"We are going to seize as much of this ground as we can," Joshua Boger, chairman and chief executive of Vertex, said in an interview.
Joshua Boger, chief executive of Vertex, a biotechnology company in Cambridge, Mass., said the drug, which can be taken orally, seemed to work and was nontoxic in laboratory and some animal tests.
Several of the people with whom fake Matt is friends also appeared to be fakes, including a copycat of Vertex Pharmaceuticals founder and chief executive Joshua Boger.
