Before Vir Biotechnology was founded in 2017, the biotech and pharmaceutical industries lacked a major infectious disease player. In the decades leading up to that point, large drug developers had slowly eliminated or significantly decreased their focus on vaccines, antibacterials, and antivirals for diseases like influenza, hepatitis, and tuberculosis. While research and development, and new tools like RNAi, CRISPR, novel vaccine platforms and recently developed AI and drug discovery tools had been applied to cancer and other diseases, they had not been pursued with purpose in infectious disease. The goal with Vir was to build and acquire all these tools, including T and B-Cell biology, and apply them to fight infectious disease.

Through his work at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bob More was introduced to some of Vir’s early technology at its predecessor, Tomegavax. As a board member at Tomegavax, Bob helped orchestrate the acquisition of the company and subsequent formation of Vir. Vir quickly raised over $500 million to apply the advances in biology to fight diseases that remain among the most deadly in the world: hepatitis B, influenza A, HIV, tuberculosis, and SARS-CoV-2. Led by former Biogen CEO George Scangos, Vir has grown to more 200 employees in just 3 years, developing 4 technology platforms and advanced several drug candidates into clinical trials.

Fighting The War on Bugs

The COVID pandemic has provided a new context in which the drug development industry operates. True to its mission, Vir quickly established a leading position among companies chasing COVID therapies. Looking back, however, it is clear that Vir entered the space with an advantage over its competitors. In its compound library, the company had antibodies isolated from patients who had recovered from SARS. Like its universal flu vaccine, Vir’s COVID antibodies target an area on the virus stem that is conserved between SARS, MERS, and COVID. This suggests that the virus will not be able to mutate and evade the drug, offering the possibility of a pan-corona drug in the future. Vir will begin testing two formulations of its antibodies in Phase II trials starting this summer.

Vir Technology Platforms:

Spotlight on Universal Flu

Building a truly universal flu vaccine requires a dramatic shift away from the established paradigm. The current flu vaccines have proven to have low efficacy, and are not consistent year to year. In recent years, the response rate to vaccines has dropped as low as 20%, with many patients falling ill even after getting vaccinated. This is due to a number of factors, not least of which is the fact that researchers must guess which strains of the virus will infect people in the upcoming season.