--- description: Vertex Pharmaceuticals: 2025 TIME100 Most Influential Companies title: TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2025: Vertex Pharmaceuticals image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4f9d1c99a9594d88/6998c741a97fc04827a746a6/250707_T100Companies_Vertex-Pharmaceuticals.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Jun 26, 2025 # Vertex Pharmaceuticals Impact in Health by [Alice Park](/author/alice-park/) ## Alice Park Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Senior Correspondent  Vertex Pharmaceuticals CEO Reshma Kewalramani Vertex Pharmaceuticals CEO Reshma KewalramaniCourtesy Vertex Pharmaceuticals Boston and London biotech company Vertex Pharmaceuticals is on a roll. In the past year and a half, Vertex worked with CRISPR Therapeutics to develop the first CRISPR treatment approved by the U.S. FDA, called Casgevy, which treats sickle-cell disease and beta thalassemia; received approval for its fifth cystic fibrosis treatment, and in January, also earned FDA approval for the first non-opioid pain killer, Journavx, in more than two decades. CEO Dr. Reshma Kewalramani is a triple threat, combining medical, research, and business experience to lead the 36-year-old company. She has continued the drug development pathway on which the company was founded: rational drug design, meaning designing drugs to address a known biological process, rather than spending time with the traditional trial and error practice of combining and testing chemicals in the hope of landing on one that has the desired effect. When faced with the myriad diseases and equally numerous targets for potential drugs the company could pursue, Kewalramani leans on a specific formula: Vertex concentrates on diseases where there aren’t many treatment options, or high unmet need; they look for genetic or drug targets that animal models show can make a difference in the disease; the disease needs to have so-called biomarkers, or ways that researchers can track changes produced by the treatment; and the therapy developed should have a clear pathway for getting approval from regulatory agencies like the FDA. The approach has served the company well. Its market capitalization is around $114 billion, and total revenues were up 12% from the previous year. Treating pain in a way that avoided the addictive side effect of opioids checked all of these boxes, although it took two decades to identify the right pathway to target. “Why did we do this? Because we thought pain was an incredibly important disease where there was no innovation and where we thought we could make a big difference,” says Kewalramani. “And why did we keep going? Because of the science and our desire to work in areas where we could make this kind of transformative leap.” Following the launch of Casgevy, which allows people with sickle cell disease to receive a single CRISPR gene therapy to address the genetic mutation responsible for their disease, Vertex is continuing to pursue what Kewalramani calls “one and done curative medicines.” They are in the late stages of testing a cell-based treatment for type 1 diabetes that could potentially help people skip regular insulin injections by giving them healthy insulin-making pancreatic beta cells. The company is also developing new treatments for chronic kidney disease, for which there have not been new options in almost a decade, and in 2024, Vertex bought Alpine Immune Sciences for $4.9 billion to accelerate its search for novel kidney treatments. “We are simply not interested in making me-too medicines,” says Kewalramani. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-companies-2025/7289665/vertex-pharmaceuticals/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-companies-2025/7289665/vertex-pharmaceuticals/"},"headline":"Vertex Pharmaceuticals","datePublished":"2025-06-26T11:24:51.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T02:29:37.294Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-companies-2025/7289665/vertex-pharmaceuticals/","keywords":["Companies2025","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4f9d1c99a9594d88/6998c741a97fc04827a746a6/250707_T100Companies_Vertex-Pharmaceuticals.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alice Park","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/alice-park/"}],"creator":"Alice Park","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4f9d1c99a9594d88/6998c741a97fc04827a746a6/250707_T100Companies_Vertex-Pharmaceuticals.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/companies2025/","name":"Companies2025"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-companies-2025/7289665/vertex-pharmaceuticals/","name":"Vertex Pharmaceuticals"}}]}] ```