Vir Biotechnology and Alnylam Pick a Coronavirus Vaccine Candidate to Pursue

The collaboration between Vir Biotechnology (NASDAQ: VIR) and Alnylam (NASDAQ: ALNY) that they expanded in March to address COVID-19 has selected a treatment candidate to advance into clinical trials. The partners will seek accelerated approval from regulators to treat human volunteers with VIR-2703, also known as ALN-COV, which makes it hard for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus to reproduce.

The partners selected their candidate from hundreds of small interfering RNA (siRNA) strands that targeted different portions of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. The partners still aren't sure if they want to develop VIR-2703 as a treatment for patients with COVID-19 or as a vaccine to prevent its transmission, but they do know that in the laboratory, it inhibits the production of the virus responsible for COVID-19 at relatively low concentrations. Vir and Alnylam plan to develop VIR-2703 as an inhaled formula.

Image source: Getty Images.

Source Fool.com