The Quant King, the Drug Hunter, and the Quest to Unlock New Cures
A billionaire and his very powerful computer are helping a pharma pioneer find the drugs of tomorrow.
At the headquarters of Relay Therapeutics in Cambridge, Mass., medicinal chemists, structural biologists and computational researchers are working on protein-motion models.
Photographer: Kieran Kesner for Bloomberg
Ten years ago, drug hunter Mark Murcko was thinking about motion.
Then the chief technology officer of Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., Murcko was a pioneer. It’s rare for a scientist to bring even a single drug to market over the span of a career. Murcko helped find five, including treatments for hepatitis C and HIV. The success that he and Vertex enjoyed was grounded in a seemingly simple idea: Understanding the physical structure of proteins that cause disease is the key to making drugs that work.