The company has eight drugs in human testing now and hopes to put five to seven early-stage projects in the clinic this year. These are lofty goals by any standard. And some analysts are voicing skepticism that it can succeed. We believe that the Street is becoming more cautious of Vertex' promise to uniquely deliver almost all of its drug candidates to commercialization. Hines has a sell rating on the stock.
Vertex specializes in designing and engineering complex drugs using so-called parallel drug design.
With an integrated approach that combines functional genomics and chemistry, Vertex searches for potential drugs across families of drug targets, instead of focusing on one target at a time. The company claims this method of identifying possible drugs is much faster and more productive than the output at traditional drug companies. And Vertex has persuaded eight of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world to collaborate with it. For now, believers in Vertex outnumber naysayers. Many analysts remain steadfast in their positive opinions even though the company has said its most advanced drug, VX-497 for hepatitis C, hasn't done especially well in trials so far.