Ver­tex con­tin­ues shop­ping, spend­ing $20M up­front to ac­cess Ri­bometrix's RNA-drug­ging plat­form

Ver­tex, flush with $4 bil­lion in cash and cash equiv­a­lents (as of June 30), has been on the prowl to park its ex­cess cap­i­tal in places with po­ten­tial. Its lat­est in­jec­tion is in Durham, North Car­oli­na-based Ri­bometrix — a start­up work­ing on tar­get­ing RNA with small mol­e­cule drugs.

Cre­at­ed by Kevin Weeks, a chemist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill, and his for­mer un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dent Katie Warn­er — the com­pa­ny is part of a slate of drug de­vel­op­ers such as Sky­hawk Ther­a­peu­tics, Ar­rakis and Ex­pan­sion Ther­a­peu­tics, as well as No­var­tis $NVS and Mer­ck $MRK who have sim­i­lar lofty am­bi­tions.

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