Vir's CMO says he's sur­prised that a low dose of their he­pati­tis B drug ap­pears promis­ing in ear­ly slice of da­ta — shares soar

Ini­tial topline da­ta from a Phase I study of a new ther­a­peu­tic for chron­ic he­pati­tis B virus was so promis­ing that it sur­prised even the CMO of the com­pa­ny that pro­duces it.

Vir Biotech­nol­o­gy on Tues­day an­nounced that its VIR-3434 mol­e­cule re­duced the lev­el of virus sur­face anti­gens present in a blind­ed pa­tient co­hort af­ter eight days of the tri­al with just a sin­gle 6 mg dose. Six of the eight pa­tients in the co­hort were giv­en the mol­e­cule, and the oth­er two a place­bo—all six who re­ceived the mol­e­cule saw a mean anti­gen re­duc­tion of 1.3 log10 IU/mL, Vir said.

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