Company: ABUS
Filing Date: 2025-11-13
Form Type: 10-Q
Source: 0001447028-25-000126
Chunk: 83

Company: Arbutus Biopharma Corp
Filing Date: 2025-11-13
Form: 10-Q
Item: Part I, Item 2
Chunk 83
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 combination with VTP-300, Barinthus Biotherapeutics plc’s (Barinthus) HBV immunotherapeutic, and ongoing NA therapy in patients with cHBV infection, including a cohort with the addition of low dose nivolumab (Opdivo®) (IM-PROVE II). At the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) Congress in May 2025, we presented data from this clinical trial showing that 25% (2/8) of the patients with low dose nivolumab added to the treatment regimen and with baseline HBsAg levels less than 1000 IU/mL achieved functional cure. Furthermore, an additional 30 patients (including some HBeAg positive patients) who did not achieve functional cure were able to remain off NA therapy for at least 48 weeks after discontinuing NA therapy following treatment with imdusiran. These data from the IM-PROVE II trial suggest that the combination of imdusiran, VTP-300, NA therapy and low dose nivolumab was generally safe and well-tolerated with beneficial clinical outcomes.

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Our Product Candidates

Our pipeline consists of two product candidates that are designed to suppress HBV DNA and HBV RNA, reduce HBsAg and other viral antigens and/or boost HBV-specific immune responses, to allow cHBV patients to become and remain treatment-free, as follows: 

We continue to explore pipeline opportunities in the form of potential strategic alliances, in order to accelerate the development of these programs.

RNAi therapeutic (imdusiran, AB-729)  

RNAi therapeutics represent a significant advancement in drug development. RNAi therapeutics utilize a natural pathway within cells to effectively silence genes by eliminating the disease-causing proteins that they code for. We are developing an RNAi therapeutic, imdusiran, that is designed to reduce HBV DNA, HBV RNA, HBsAg and other HBV antigen expression in people with cHBV infection. Reducing HBsAg and HBV DNA are widely believed to be key prerequisites to enable a patient’s immune system to reawaken and respond against the virus.  

Imdusiran has the following advantages over other RNAi therapeutics in development for cHBV infection:

–Targeted to hepatocytes using our proprietary covalently conjugated GalNAc delivery technology which provides highly efficient liver-targeted uptake and enables subcutaneous dosing.

–Unique nucleotide sequence that is single trigger and targets