IRWD

Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

A Boston-based biotechnology company that develops and sells medicines for digestive and rare diseases, best known for Linzess, a prescription treatment for chronic constipation and irritable bowel syndrome. It began in 1998 as Microbia, founded by postdocs from a Whitehead Institute lab, and renamed itself Ironwood in 2008 after the long-lived desert tree that shelters other plants — a nod to endurance. Its flagship drug linaclotide was discovered by those same early researchers.