
For Blood and Money
Billionaires, Biotech, and the Quest for a Blockbuster Drug
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Narrated by:
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Rob Shapiro
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By:
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Nathan Vardi
About this listen
A gripping business narrative and scientific thriller about what it takes to bring a wonder drug to market—and save countless lives.
For Blood and Money tells the little-known story of how an upstart biotechnology company created a one-in-a-million cancer drug and how the core team—denied their share of the profits—went and did it again. In this epic saga of money and science, veteran financial journalist Nathan Vardi explains how the invention of two of the biggest cancer drugs in history became (for their backers) two of the greatest Wall Street bets of all time.
In the multibillion-dollar business of biotech, where pharmaceutical companies, the government, hedge funds, and venture capitalists have spent billions on funding, experimentation, and treatments, a single molecule can stop cancer in its tracks—and make the people who find that rare molecule astonishingly rich. For Blood and Money follows a small team at a biotech start-up in California, who have found one of these rare molecules. Their compound, known as a BTK inhibitor, seems to work on a vicious type of leukemia. When patients start rising from their hospice beds, the team knows they’re onto something big.
What follows is a story of genius, pathos, and drama, in which vivid characters navigate a world of corporate intrigue and ambiguous morality. Vardi’s narrative immerses listeners in the recent explosion of biotech start-ups. He describes the scientists, doctors, and investors who are risking everything to develop new, life-saving treatments, and introduces suffering patients for whom the stakes are life-or-death. A gripping nonfiction listen, For Blood and Money illustrates why it’s so hard to bring new drugs to market, explains why they are so expensive, and examines how profit-driven venture capitalists are shaping the future of medicine.
©2023 Nathan Vardi (P)2023 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years. Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future. In Material World, Ed Conway embarks on an epic journey across continents, cultures, and epochs to reveal the underpinnings of modern life on Earth—traveling from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates.
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Insightful
- By Sam on 01-17-24
By: Ed Conway
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Superconvergence
- How the Genetics, Biotech, and AI Revolutions Will Transform our Lives, Work, and World
- By: Jamie Metzl
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster, Jamie Metzl
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Leading futurist and OneShared.World founder Jamie Metzl explores how genome sequencing, gene editing, artificial intelligence, and other technologies are not only changing our lives, but catalyzing each other in radical and accelerating ways. These technologies have the potential to improve our health, feed billions of people, supercharge our economies, and store essential information for millions of years, but can also—if we are not careful—do immeasurable harm.
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Great Book Somewhat Spoiled by Self-Promotion
- By Jack E. Koepke on 06-22-24
By: Jamie Metzl
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The Antidote
- Inside the World of New Pharma
- By: Barry Werth
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1989, the charismatic Joshua Boger left Merck, then America's most admired business, to found a drug company that would challenge industry giants and transform health care. Barry Werth described the company's tumultuous early days during the AIDS crisis in The Billion-Dollar Molecule, a celebrated classic of science and business journalism. Now he returns to tell a riveting story of Vertex's bold endurance and eventual success.
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For me this was not interesting
- By Yan on 06-26-17
By: Barry Werth
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Sugar
- The World Corrupted from Slavery to Obesity
- By: James Walvin
- Narrated by: Roger Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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How did a simple commodity, once the prized monopoly of kings and princes, become an essential ingredient in the lives of millions, before mutating yet again into the cause of a global health epidemic? Prior to 1600, sugar was a costly luxury, the domain of the rich. But with the rise of the sugar colonies in the New World over the following century, sugar became cheap, ubiquitous, and an everyday necessity. Less than 50 years ago, few people suggested that sugar posed a global health problem.
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I should have listened to the other reviews
- By L. Bergman on 12-31-18
By: James Walvin
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Healthcare Finance
- Modern Financial Analysis for Accelerating Biomedical Innovation
- By: Andrew W. Lo, Shomesh E. Chaudhuri
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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We are living in a golden age of biomedical innovation, yet entrepreneurs still struggle with the so-called Valley of Death when seeking funding for their biotech start-ups. In Healthcare Finance, Andrew Lo and Shomesh Chaudhuri show that there are better ways to finance breakthrough therapies, and they provide the essential financial tools and concepts for creating the next generation of healthcare technologies.
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Recomended
- By Roberto Reale on 08-24-23
By: Andrew W. Lo, and others
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Boom Town
- The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, its Chaotic Founding... its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis
- By: Sam Anderson
- Narrated by: Sam Anderson
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Oklahoma City was born from chaos. It was founded in a bizarre but momentous "Land Run" in 1889, when thousands of people lined up along the borders of Oklahoma Territory and rushed in at noon to stake their claims. Since then, it has been a city torn between the wild energy that drives its outsize ambitions and the forces of order that seek sustainable progress.
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OKC’s Past & Present Weaved Together
- By dan on 09-09-18
By: Sam Anderson
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Super Founders
- What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups
- By: Ali Tamaseb
- Narrated by: Dean Temple, Catherine Ho, Jason Culp
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Ali Tamaseb has spent thousands of hours manually amassing what may be the largest dataset ever collected on start-ups, comparing billion-dollar start-ups with those that failed to become one - 30,000 data points on nearly every factor: number of competitors, market size, the founder’s age, his or her university’s ranking, quality of investors, fundraising time, and many, many more. And what he found looked far different than expected.
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Great book
- By An All time Amazoner! on 12-13-21
By: Ali Tamaseb
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The Drug Hunters
- The Improbable Quest to Discover New Medicines
- By: Donald R. Kirsch PhD, Ogi Ogas PhD
- Narrated by: James Foster
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity - by chewing, brewing, and snorting - some Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances. Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was found to have whipworms in his intestines and Bronze Age medicine, a worm-killing birch fungus, knotted to his leggings.
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Aargh!
- By Curmud the prof on 05-20-17
By: Donald R. Kirsch PhD, and others
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The Drug Discovery and Development Cycle
- A Concise Overview of the Key Steps from Concept to Launch
- By: Kabir Hussain
- Narrated by: Rebecca Sharp
- Length: 1 hr and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The pharmaceutical drug discovery and development cycle is long and complex. This audiobook provides a concise overview of the whole process and offers insights into working in the pharmaceutical industry. It is ideal for individuals who are thinking about a career in this industry, as well as those who want to gain a general understanding of pharmaceutical drug discovery and development.
By: Kabir Hussain
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Immune
- A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive
- By: Philipp Dettmer
- Narrated by: Steve Taylor
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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You wake up and feel a tickle in your throat. Your head hurts. You’re mildly annoyed as you get the kids ready for school and dress for work yourself. Meanwhile, an epic war is being fought, just below your skin. Millions are fighting and dying for you to be able to complain as you head out the door. So what, exactly, is your immune system? In Immune, Philipp Dettmer, the brains behind the most popular science channel on YouTube, takes listeners on a journey through the fortress of the human body and its defenses.
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Steve Taylor for the win
- By Bay Area Engineer on 11-02-21
By: Philipp Dettmer
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The Trading Game
- A Confession
- By: Gary Stevenson
- Narrated by: Gary Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken soccer balls on the run-down streets of East London, Gary Stevenson dreamed of something bigger. As luck would have it, he was good at numbers. At the London School of Economics, wearing tracksuits and sneakers, Stevenson shocked his posh classmates by winning a competition called “The Trading Game.” The prize? A golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader at Citibank.
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Great substance and storytelling
- By Daniel Tunkelang on 03-07-24
By: Gary Stevenson
What listeners say about For Blood and Money
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- Gregory S Young
- 10-18-23
Entertaining and informative
I really enjoyed the book. Educational about cancer and tech investing. We’ll performed as well.
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- Marina Edler
- 01-20-23
Fascinating look into the ecosystem and politics of drug development
Vardi gives a detailed account of the harrowing story of the grit and perseverance of scientists and investors as they put everything on the line to bring an elegant molecule in a novel class of class of cancer medicines to patients with little alternative. Amazing testament to what people can achieve when they work together. The money involved is mind boggling and not something that I personally focus on, but it is a clear driver for many involved. Highly recommended.
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- Anonymous User
- 04-10-24
a close view of the biotechnology industry
Was riveted by the story of the Ceos and the researchers. I never realized that it is a ruthless field.
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- VL
- 05-23-24
Amazing Ride Through the World of Biotech
Really interesting story with lots of twists and turns as the story unfolds of how two blockbuster drugs were delivered to market.
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- Nishant Gupta
- 07-15-23
Captivating!
Great storyline and narration! The story started slow but really picked up pace over the chapters!
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- ItsBeenReal
- 10-24-23
Great true and timely story of our broken system
Whatever a page turner is for audio...this is it. I am an insider in the industry, and to me this was as good as any action movie.
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- Darcy
- 03-01-23
Really enjoyed this title
A great story at the intersection of cutting edge medical science, high -stakes finance, and human personalities and foibles. I found it fascinating to get an inside view on the development of new drugs, whose failures often exceed their promise, while many others sit on shelves waiting for often serendipitous discovery by financiers and corporations.
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- J. Muscato
- 02-23-23
Interesting story hampered by incorrect pronunciation
As a hematologist the story of the real world of venture capitalism in the production of this outstanding drug was interesting and disturbing. The docs doing the real work were cast aside because of finance kings- very unfair. The story was hampered by incorrect pronunciation of specific scientific terms (such as the initial mentions of tyrosine kinases and the organization ASH) which would have been easily corrected if the narrator (who is good otherwise) did this in the presence of a person in the field.
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- Patrick Meng-Frecker
- 05-25-24
the sums of money will blow your mind
it was an important story to tell about modern drug development. it's interesting to hear how hedgefunds and investors make massively expensive drug trials possible sometimes taking huge losses but this time making an enormous windfall.
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-16-25
Gripping
So so good!! I work in this field and it really brought alive the stress and tedium of protocols, trials, regulatory reviews…all so boring but a gateway to better health and prosperity.
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