The IPO of vir biotechnology, which is dedicated to infectious diseases, fell nearly 30%, and hepatitis B may achieve functional cure

Virbiotechnology, founded in April 2016, is a clinical immunology company from California, USA, focusing on the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases Its mission is to create a world free of infectious diseases When George scangos, the company's CEO, resigned from Biogen, the industry was concerned about where he would continue to work in the field of biology Scangos said he was attracted by the "huge medical demand" of the strong infectious disease market, so he joined virbiotechnology in January 2017 In the early morning of Beijing time on the 12th, scagos will lead the biopharmaceutical company, which has been established for less than three years, to ring the bell on NASDAQ and return to Wall Street himself Virbiotechnology issued 7.1 million shares at a price of $20 However, due to the market's dissatisfaction with its high valuation, the stock price opened directly at $16.50, 18% lower than the issue price, and then fell all the way to $14.02, down 29.9% VIR biotechnology is the worst U.S IPO since May, ranking fifth in all IPOs this year Infectious diseases are one of the major causes of death worldwide and cause hundreds of billions of dollars of economic burden every year "I can't miss the opportunity to lead vir There is a huge global demand for the treatment of infectious diseases Effective treatment and prevention of infectious diseases is very important for public health The success of the new technology will mean alleviating the suffering of many people " "We need a company to pursue more effective and innovative treatments," said scagos, CEO of virbiotechnology Virbiotechnology is that company, and I'm very happy to play a leading role " Virbiotechnology was founded by Robert Nelson, founder of archventure and Klaus frueh, a senior scientist at the University of health and technology of Oregon, and received angel investment from archventure Dr Klaus frueh is also president and chief scientific officer of biotechnology company tomegavax, which was acquired by virbiotechnology in September 2016 Virbiotechnology uses new immunology technologies to fight against infectious diseases, and adopts a multi scheme and multi platform approach to apply these breakthroughs, including the development of inductive and therapeutic immune response treatment methods, and manipulation of the interaction between pathogens and hosts to deal with strong infectious diseases VIR research focuses on three infectious diseases: chronic infectious diseases, including hepatitis B, tuberculosis and AIDS; respiratory diseases, including influenza, respiratory syncytial virus and metapneumovirus; and hospital acquired infection Through internal development, cooperation and acquisition, virbiotechnology has established four technology platforms, namely antibody platform, T cell platform, innate immune platform and siRNA platform Virbiotechnology's approach starts with identifying the limitations of the immune system against a particular pathogen, the vulnerability of that pathogen, and the reasons why previous approaches failed Then, powerful technologies can be used individually or in combination to produce effective therapies According to the prospectus of virbiotechnology, there are five drugs in the current research and development pipeline, which are respectively targeted at hepatitis B, influenza A, AIDS and tuberculosis The fastest-growing vir-2218 is a siRNA based drug for hepatitis B virus, which is undergoing phase II clinical trials Preliminary data showed that HBsAg or HBsAg were significantly reduced, about 4 to 200 fold, and well tolerated Vir-2482 is a monoclonal antibody that can prevent H1N1 It is currently in phase I clinical trials There are relatively few siRNA drugs, so far only onpattro (patisiran), developed by Alnylam, has been approved by FDA in 2018 The technology used in virbiotechnology's siRNA technology platform is also licensed through the agreement with Alnylam, and has obtained the global exclusive license of vir-2218, and milestone payment according to the R & D progress Every year, about 290 million people around the world are infected with HBV for a long time, and about 900000 of them die of related complications Vir-2218 is a kind of siRNA drug targeting HBV injected subcutaneously, and vir-3434 is a neutralizing monoclonal antibody of HBV injected subcutaneously Vir-2218 and vir-3434 are expected to lead to functional cure of hepatitis B, which means lifelong control of the virus after limited treatment time Each of the two candidate products has the potential to stimulate an effective immune response and also has direct antiviral activity against HBV China tengshengbo has introduced vir-2218 for clinical development in China Virbiotechnology's prospectus states that in addition to antiviral activity, functional treatment of HBV requires an effective immune response Although it is possible for both drugs to provide functional healing in some patients, for most patients, combination therapy may be used to synergize by removing potentially tolerable HBV proteins and stimulating new HBV specific T cells Vir-2482 is a kind of A-neutralizing monoclonal antibody for the prevention of influenza A clinical trials began in August 2019 Preclinical trials showed that vir-2482 has covered all major influenza A virus strains since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, with a half-life of five to six months, covering the whole influenza season Vir-1111 is a subcutaneous hivt cell vaccine based on HCMV It is planned to submit ind in the first half of 2020, and then start phase I clinical trial Vir-2020 is a HCMV based subcutaneous TBT cell vaccine In preclinical studies, it has been shown that T cell vaccine based on rhesus monkey cytomegalovirus or RhCMV can protect non-human primates from tuberculosis It is expected to submit ind for clinical trials in 2020 Virbiotechnology's approach is to use human cytomegalovirus or HCMV as a vaccine vector to potentially treat and prevent pathogens that are currently powerless by vaccine technology Because HCMV may induce strong and long-lasting T cell response in a wider range, which is better than common virus vaccine At present, the safety and toxicity of this technology are only studied in animals with limited replication capacity of HCMV The financing and acquisition information of virbiotechnology was at the beginning of the establishment of virbiotechnology On January 6, 2017, it received an angel round financing of 150 million US dollars led by the famous venture capital company archventure, bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Altitudelifescienceventures, softbankvisionfund and altapartners also participated in the first round of financing On August 7, 2018, in round a financing, virbiotechnology received US $66 million On January 1, 2019, in round B financing, virbiotechnology obtained $327.6 million from softbankvisionfund, archventurepartners and altapartners Despite its short establishment time, virbiotechnology has raised more than US $500 million, with high market attention Archventure has the largest stake in virbiotechnology, accounting for 27% Next came the Softbank vision fund, which became the second largest shareholder at 21.2% Scangos, the founder and CEO, owns 6.7% of the shares Vicki Sato, chairman of the board, has a 1.7% stake and has a long and distinguished career in biotechnology Scangos's income is much lower than when he was in other companies Last year, scagos was paid $783000, while Herbert "skip" virgin, director of research and development at the University of Washington School of medicine, was paid $2.16 million, nearly three times the CEO's salary In September 2016, virbiotechnology acquired tomegavax, whose main asset is CMV based vaccine platform for HBV, HIV and TB In August 2017, virbiotechnology acquired humabsbiomedsa company in Switzerland The company's proprietary technology can quickly separate and develop antibodies naturally selected through the human immune system Currently, virbiotechnology is committed to developing all human monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of severe infectious diseases The acquisition of huMabs has brought about 15 candidate antibodies against infectious diseases for vir, among which HBV, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), MPV (human papillomavirus) and Zika (human papillomavirus) have all entered the pre clinical trial stage, dengue (dengue virus) is in the engineering stage and other antibodies In January 2018, virbiotechnology acquired agenovir, whose main asset is the research and development plan for HPV and HBV using CRISPR / cas9 gene editing method In February 2018, virbiotechnology acquired staterahealth, a cloud based clinical data prediction and analysis platform At present, there is not a drug in virbiotechnology that can be listed on the market, so it is still in the stage of R & D investment, and the company has a large loss In 2018, there was a loss of about $110 million, with a small amount of income mainly coming from donations from AIDS and tuberculosis related funds or government agencies, as well as contract income from huMabs, a Swiss subsidiary As of June 30, 2019, the six-month R & D cost is US $55.7 million, and the R & D investment in 2018 is US $100 million This is scamgos' third appearance on Wall Street When he came to Biogen from exelixis, he realized IPO in 2000 This time, it is to lead virbiotechnology to the secondary market This article is reprinted by yaozhi.com The copyright belongs to the original author The purpose of reprint is to transmit more information, which does not represent the view of this platform If the content of the work, copyright and other issues are involved, please contact our website message, we will delete the content in the first time.