Joshua Boger is one of the most popular and richest Biochemist who was born on April 12, 1951 in Concord, United States. Joshua S. Boger was born on the 12th of April 1951, in Concord, North Carolina to Charles E. Boger, Jr. who was an industrial chemist in the field of textiles as well as Mary Snead Boger, an actor and writer.
Based on the advice from Max Tishler, Boger was appointed to work for Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories in the year 1978. He began his work on the development of hypertension medications, including an extremely potent renin antagonist. One of the most important steps in this development was the use computer-based modeling to the chemical aspects of the drug’s design.
In 1989, Boger founded Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated. He has served variously as its President, CEO and Chairman of the board.
Vertex also developed Telaprevir, a protease inhibitor for treatment of hepatitis C. Telaprevir works by disabling a protein that the virus requires for replication. Scientists at Vertex first published the crystal structure for the protease of the hepatitis C virus in 1996. As part of the development process for the drug, the company developed an elaborate systems biology model in which they modeled hepatitis C’s dynamics to the level of individual patient response. Telaprevir was approved by the Food and Drug Administration as Incivek in May 2011.
Boger later attended Harvard University, where he worked alongside Jeremy R. Knowles on the Chemistry of the compound cyclodextrin. He earned his master’s degree in 1975 , and his doctorate degrees in Chemistry in 1979. He conducted postdoctoral research on molecular recognition in collaboration with Jean-Marie Lehn from the Universite Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France.
