April 12, 2020 / By ALARIC DEARMENT
A small biotechnology company focused on antiviral drugs that has lately gained prominence in the fight against Covid-19 has added a division of one of Korea’s largest business conglomerates to its growing portfolio of big-ticket biopharma partnerships.
San Francisco-based Vir Biotechnology said Thursday that it made a partnership with Songdo, South Korea-based Samsung Biologics. The deal focuses on large-scale manufacturing of monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and builds on two deals that Vir had previously announced, namely its manufacturing agreement with China-based WuXi Biologics and a letter of intent with Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Biogen. The Samsung Biologics deal is worth about $362 million, and the manufacturer is expected to start manufacturing as early as October and produce potential commercial batches of the drug starting in 2021. 