GSK's Hal Bar­ron buys a $250M stake in George Scan­gos' Vir and makes a bee­line to the clin­ic with Covid-19 an­ti­bod­ies

Glax­o­SmithK­line is div­ing straight in­to the swirling wa­ters of Covid-19 R&D work, and in­vest­ing $250 mil­lion to grab a chunk of eq­ui­ty in one of the emerg­ing stars in in­fec­tious dis­ease re­search to make it of­fi­cial.

GSK put out word this morn­ing that it is part­ner­ing with Vir Biotech­nol­o­gy $VIR, the in­fec­tious dis­ease start­up found­ed in the Bay Area by for­mer Bio­gen CEO George Scan­gos. They’re plan­ning a leap in­to Phase II stud­ies for 2 pre­clin­i­cal an­ti­body can­di­dates — VIR-7831 and VIR-7832 — that have been en­gi­neered to tar­get the SARS-CoV-2 spike pro­tein.

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