Alioss Corporate Venture Backers Ride RSV (And Hep C) To Big Payday
Summary
“Corporate VC has been the savior of early stage biotech innovation,” Silicon Valley Bank managing director Jon Norris told Xconomy earlier this year.The price tag—all cash, no strings attached—seems exorbitant for a company whose lead product is just in Phase 2, but parents of small children who have contracted RSV might beg to differ.Adults infected with the virus don’t notice or assume it’s a mild cold, but infants and small children can be hit much harder with lower respiratory complications.The biotech MedImmune, a division of AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN), produces the pediatric RSV vaccine palivizumab (Synagis), which brings in $1 billion in annual sales.However, Alios also has two preclinical HCV drugs of a type (nucleotide inhibitors) considered important for next-generation therapies that don’t rely on the standard of care interferon, which requires infusions and comes with flu-like side effects.