Vasella was intrigued: He knew from Novartis' tests of Gleevec that kinases were good drug targets.

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There are 500 kinases, and at least 24 are being targeted as cancer culprits.

FORBES: Swiss Army Medicine

With help of the speedy molecular-docking software, they are designing drugs that inhibit many kinases at once.

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Five research teams work on the 15 kinases already implicated in major diseases.

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Like chemical skeleton keys, these generic compounds can quickly be customized to gum up specific kinases as their roles in disease become clearer.

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The two kinases were so similar that Vertex researchers devised a prototype blocker for the second kinase in a year--half the normal time.

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Some 500 kinases are known to exist, and Vertex is targeting 15 that are implicated in such diseases as arthritis and cancers of the colon and breast.

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Because kinases have similar chemical structures, a single thoughtfully designed chemical can gum up more than one, taking away the cancer cells' ability to nourish themselves and divide.

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The reason the Swiss Army knife approach could prove more effective is that many of the growth-promoting proteins involved in cancer are kinases, proteins that relay signals from one part of the cell to another.

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Instead of waiting years for academics to decipher their exact involvement in a disease, Vertex decided to make prototype drugs aimed at interfering with the ways most kinases operate--and to patent as many as it could.

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Kinases seemed like a medicinal gold mine.

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