A vet­er­an on­col­o­gy start­up crew is mak­ing a very se­ri­ous bet that they’ve found the key to un­lock­ing the promise of on­colyt­ic virus­es

Five years ago, when Am­gen ush­ered the on­colyt­ic virus T-Vec over the fin­ish line at the FDA, 2 things seemed com­plete­ly clear in short or­der.

One was that an im­por­tant new av­enue in can­cer ther­a­py had been opened up, find­ing a clean shot at sol­id tu­mors while re­cruit­ing an im­mune sys­tem at­tack to “mop up” can­cer cell sur­vivors. The oth­er was that any of a num­ber of up­start ri­vals fol­low­ing that path could do a lot bet­ter.

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