The stock at Spring Bank Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:SBPH), after an especially rough Thursday, began healing a bit as investors took in the company’s decision to stop dosing and enrolling patients in its phase IIb Catalyst trials.

RNAi specialist Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s chief operating officer, James Weissman, told BioWorld that scientists inside and outside of the company have come to believe in what's called "the X hypothesis" in hepatitis B virus (HBV). "My view, though, as a person who has been in the pharmaceutical industry for decades, is who cares, anyway?" he said – as long as the drug works. He pointed out that, with the cholesterol therapy Lipitor (atorvastatin calcium) from New York-based Pfizer Inc., where he served in business development and marketing, "everybody had a different theory for why it lowered the incidence of heart disease. Nobody knew with certainty."

Rough times continued Friday at Arbutus Biopharma Corp. as it discontinued clinical development of AB-506, an oral capsid inhibitor, which is in a clinical trial for treating chronic hepatitis B. The decision was made when two healthy volunteers were found to have acute hepatitis.

MEXICO CITY – A hepatitis B virus (HBV) cure was considered “a pipe dream for many years,” Anna Kramvis, of the University of Witwatersrand, told the audience at the 2019 HIV & HBV Cure Forum, co-organized by the International AIDS Society (IAS) Towards an HIV Cure initiative and the International Coalition to Eliminate Hepatitis B (ICE-HBV). Kramvis is also on the board of ICE-HBV

Durect Corp. (NASDAQ: DRXX) got a solid bump after announcing it granted Gilead Sciences Inc. exclusive worldwide rights to develop and commercialize a long-acting injectable HIV product created with Durect's platform, Saber, in a deal that could generate more than $300 million for Durect.