{"id":235148,"date":"2010-01-27T03:40:54","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T08:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xconomy.com\/?p=60348"},"modified":"2010-01-27T03:40:54","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T08:40:54","slug":"vertex%e2%80%99s-matt-emmens-on-his-journey-from-security-guard-to-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/235148","title":{"rendered":"Vertex\u2019s Matt Emmens on His Journey From Security Guard to CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Biotech<\/a>, people<\/a>, Hepatitis C<\/a><\/div>\n

\t\t\"vertex2\"<\/a>
\n\t\tLuke Timmerman wrote:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The man hired<\/a> to turn Cambridge, MA-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals into biotechnology’s next big success story might never have gotten into the industry if he hadn’t been a security guard.<\/p>\n

It was the early 1970s, and Matt Emmens was a middle-class New Jersey kid with a vague idea of studying business at nearby Fairleigh Dickinson University<\/a>. He worked as an auto mechanic for a while to help pay the steep private school tuition. He even dropped out for a while to save cash before he got a lucky break: During his senior year, he scored free tuition and room and board as head of security on campus.<\/p>\n

Being the man with a lot of keys meant Emmens got to know a lot of people on campus who sometimes needed help. That included people in the career office, who suggested he interview with a drug company: Merck. “It was a godsend,” Emmens says.<\/p>\n

Thirty-five years later, this 58-year-old executive with humble beginnings, finds himself as a leader in an industry full of hard-charging brainiacs. He took over last May as the chairman and CEO of Vertex (NASDAQ: VRTX<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Today, Vertex is a company that aspires to do no less than shake up medicine like only a handful of biotechs have ever done, namely Genentech and Gilead Sciences. Vertex plans to finish up the final phase of clinical trials of a drug that it hopes will transform the treatment of hepatitis C liver infections<\/a>, and which analysts predict will exceed more than $2 billion in U.S. sales after just a couple years on the market. Vertex plans to follow that up with a first-of-its-kind oral pill for cystic fibrosis that experts say has the potential to be the first to correct the underlying protein abnormality<\/a> at the roots of the fatal lung disease.<\/p>\n

\"Matt<\/a><\/p>\n

Matt Emmens<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The pressure to perform is on, and plenty of people will be watching Emmens closely this year. Vertex’s market capitalization has swollen to $7 billion, and it spent a staggering $516 million on R&D in 2008. Vertex added 200 employees last year, and now has about 1,100 on staff in Cambridge, MA, and another 175 in San Diego.<\/p>\n

“This is about getting a group of people together, and developing a vision for something that seems impossible,” Emmens says. “This is about involving people in an undertaking they’ll remember their whole life.”<\/p>\n

I talked to Emmens in depth about his life journey a couple weeks ago in San Francisco while we were both attending the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. I’ve been itching to interview him one-on-one since May. He officially took over at that time when founder and CEO Josh Boger stepped down after a 20-year run at the helm<\/a>. The rationale was pretty straightforward. Boger was the scientist with the adventurous entrepreneurial spirit who built the company’s R&D engine. But as Vertex inched toward the anticipated commercial introduction of telaprevir in 2011, it needed an experienced commercial guy to take over.<\/p>\n

The official corporate biography<\/a> of Emmens doesn’t say much about who he is. He had previous stints as CEO of U.K-based Shire Pharmaceuticals, president of Germany-based Merck KGaA’s pharmaceuticals division, CEO at Astra Merck, and a series of managerial jobs at Merck.<\/p>\n

Meeting Emmens in person, he doesn’t strike an imposing figure, at about 5-foot-10 with a medium build. He speaks in a soft monotone, and has the standard-issue conservatively cut gray hair …Next Page »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Biotech, people, Hepatitis C Luke Timmerman wrote: The man hired to turn Cambridge, MA-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals into biotechnology’s next big success story might never have gotten into the industry if he hadn’t been a security guard. It was the early 1970s, and Matt Emmens was a middle-class New Jersey kid with a vague idea of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1192"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}