Empowered Patient Podcast

Marianne De Backer is the CEO of Vir Biotechnology, a company developing treatments that harness the power of the immune system to fight serious infectious diseases and cancer. Vir Biotechnology’s current clinical trials include a registrational program in chronic hepatitis delta, a rare, often fatal liver disease, as well as two Phase 1 trials of PRO-XTEN™ dual-masked T-cell engagers (TCEs), one targeting HER-2 and the other targeting PSMA, each in heavily pre-treated cancer patients. TCEs have shown tremendous potential but have been limited due to toxicity challenges. The PRO-XTEN™ technology keeps the TCEs masked until they reach the tumor microenvironment, potentially mitigating the toxicity of TCEs and allowing them to unleash their tremendous potential to destroy cancer cells.  Marianne explains, “Vir Biotechnology is an immunology company, and that means that we are really developing treatments that take advantage of the power of basically the patient's own immune system to fight a variety of diseases