Gilead Sciences and trendy biotech Vir Biotechnology are teaming up in the effort to find a cure to the liver disease hepatitis B. Gilead already has vast experience in hepatitis C, producing drugs and combos a few years back that essentially cured the disease. Now, it’s working its way through the alphabet, penning a deal late last year in hepatitis D and now signing up with Vir for hepatitis B (HBV) in the hope of bettering its already marketed HBV meds. Current HBV treatments may suppress viral replication, but they do not completely clear out the virus; the infection’s covalently closed circular DNA, or cccDNA, enables HBV replication to restart if treatment is stopped. Vir is hoping to put an end to that and has already teamed up with Alnylam. Back in the summer, the companies unveiled a peek at their ongoing phase 2 of RNA hopeful VIR-2218 in patients with chronic HBV on nucleotide/nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, the current standard of care. Their therapy is desig