Vertex Captures Ex-Merck Vaccine Head -- To Its Board, As Telaprevir Readies For Launch

I missed her nomination in the SEC-filed Vertex proxy statement (her one year non-compete must be up!) -- but here it is, just off the wires:

. . . .[Vertex common shareholders today] elected nominee Margaret C. McGlynn to the company’s board of directors. . . . Ms. McGlynn most recently served as President, Global Vaccines and Infectious Diseases, for Merck & Co., Inc. In her nearly three decades at Merck, Ms. McGlynn held a number of leadership roles focused on marketing, sales and managed care activities for Merck’s portfolio of medicines. She is a member of the National Industrial Advisory Committee at the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and holds a B.S. in Pharmacy and an M.B.A. in Marketing from the State University of New York at Buffalo. The addition of Ms. McGlynn brings the number of Vertex board members to eight.

"Ms. McGlynn will provide our Board with invaluable commercial expertise as we await the approval of INCIVEK for people with hepatitis C," said Matthew Emmens, Vertex's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. "I welcome Margie to our Board and look forward to her contributions at this exciting time for our company. . . ."

Fascinating -- I wonder if this will presage the relative commercial advantage of Vertex's offering, over legacy Schering-Plough (now New Merck), in next gen Hep C cures, come May 28, 2011, or shortly thereafter. By the way, Goldman Sachs is advocating buying calls on Vertex at Monday's $54.40 price -- speculating on a takeover. This morning, VRTX is trading around $57.