Shares of Vir Biotechnology (NASDAQ: VIR) are plunging on Wednesday following the company's release of an update regarding one of its leading pipeline candidates. At 12:28 p.m. EST the drugmaker's stock was down by 33% after falling by as much as 35.3% earlier in the day.
Vir Biotechnology, in collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline , is developing VIR-7831, a potential antibody treatment for COVID-19. It is undergoing a phase 3 clinical trial as part of the Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) Program, an initiative spearheaded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). However, a sensitivity analysis of the data from the trial by the independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) raised concerns that VIR-7831 may not be a very effective treatment. As a result, the DSMB recommended that the VIR-7831 arm of the ACTIVE-3 trial be closed to enrollment, despite the medicine's meeting criteria to move on to the next phase. Note that the study did not raise safety concerns about VIR-7831.
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Why Vir Biotechnology Stock Is Dropping Today