Arbutus Pharma Corp.

Company overview. Arbutus Biopharma Corporation (Nasdaq: ABUS), commonly "Arbutus," is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company incorporated in 2005 and formerly known as Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation (renamed July 2015). It was long headquartered at 701 Veterans Circle, Warminster, Pennsylvania, with Canadian roots in Burnaby, BC. It is publicly traded and not a subsidiary. Following 2024–2025 restructurings, headcount fell to roughly 19 employees, and the company announced it would exit the Warminster headquarters and discontinue in-house research. FY2025 revenue was about $14 million.

Products / operations. Arbutus is an operating drug developer, not a shell. Its lead candidates target chronic hepatitis B (cHBV): imdusiran (AB-729), a GalNAc-conjugated, subcutaneously delivered RNAi therapeutic in Phase 2a trials, and AB-101, an oral PD-L1 inhibitor in Phase 1a/1b development. Revenue comes from licensing and royalties rather than product sales. Arbutus also owns lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery technology developed in-house, exclusively licensed to Genevant Sciences GmbH (a Roivant Sciences subsidiary), under which Arbutus holds roughly 16% of Genevant's parent equity — the asset underlying its patent litigation.

Patent-litigation posture. The structured data show one tracked case, as plaintiff only (1 plaintiff / 0 defendant), in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. This is not NPE behavior: Arbutus asserts patents it developed internally over its own LNP delivery inventions against large mRNA-vaccine manufacturers. The venue is the relatively defense-friendly District of New Jersey, not a plaintiff-favored district such as the Eastern District of Texas.

Notable cases / context. The tracked matter, Arbutus Pharma Corp. et al. v. Pfizer Inc. et al. (filed 2023-04-04, D.N.J.), involves five U.S. LNP patents asserted with co-plaintiff Genevant against Pfizer and BioNTech over mRNA-COVID-19 vaccines. Externally, Arbutus and Genevant filed parallel actions in Canada and the Unified Patent Court in July 2026, and in March 2026 settled global litigation with Moderna (reported at up to roughly $2.25–2.5 billion, with an initial ~$178 million payment to Arbutus). Arbutus has also faced adverse PTAB/Federal Circuit outcomes on some earlier LNP claims.