In­ter­im da­ta on Vir's Al­ny­lam-part­nered RNAi hep B drug sug­gest ef­fi­ca­cy is broad­ly on par with J&J, Ar­row­head ri­val — an­a­lysts

With ef­forts un­der­way to de­vel­op an an­ti­dote for Covid-19, Vir Ther­a­peu­tics and its chief George Scan­gos, a Bio­gen vet­er­an who has been tapped to co­or­di­nate BIO’s re­sponse to the out­break, have cap­tured the spot­light of late. Now, the Al­ny­lam-part­nered im­munol­o­gy-fo­cused com­pa­ny now has more en­cour­ag­ing da­ta to re­port from its on­go­ing he­pati­tis B pro­gram.

The pro­gram — which is based on ri­bonu­cle­ic acid in­ter­fer­ence (RNAi), an ap­proach that aims to si­lence cer­tain genes to curb the pro­duc­tion of dis­ease-caus­ing pro­teins — is the first from the Al­ny­lam pact to en­ter clin­i­cal tri­als.

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