Vivek Ra­maswamy's Ar­bu­tus kills an­oth­er pro­gram over safe­ty, stock takes an­oth­er hit

Vivek Ra­maswamy and Roivant’s $100 mil­lion bet on Ar­bu­tus and their he­pati­tis B pipeline have seen bet­ter days.

Ra­maswamy made the bet in 2017, three months af­ter he had se­cured $1.1 bil­lion from Masayoshi Son’s Vi­sion Fund for Roivant. The Cana­di­an biotech’s stock had cratered af­ter the Phase II fail­ure of its Ebo­la vac­cine, but Ra­maswamy, al­ready a stake­hold­er and the chair­man of the board, saw po­ten­tial in its RNA–based HBV tech­nol­o­gy and a lead drug al­ready in Phase II. He in­vest­ed $116 mil­lion with Ar­bu­tus and ini­ti­at­ed a new part­ner­ship be­tween it and Roivant. Roivant would pro­vide in­fra­struc­ture to help de­vel­op their tech.

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