Hookipa Pharma is a Vienna biotech that engineers arenaviruses into vaccines that drive unusually strong killer T-cell responses; HB-200 targets the HPV16 proteins that cause many head and neck cancers.
Hookipa Pharma develops arenavirus-based immunotherapies built on lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus and Pichinde virus vectors, which infect dendritic cells and induce large populations of antigen-specific CD8 T cells. HB-200 (eseba-vec) alternates the two vectors, each encoding an HPV16 E7/E6 fusion protein, and has been studied with pembrolizumab in first-line HPV16-positive head and neck cancer. Its KRAS programme HB-700 was licensed to Roche and later returned. The company announced a strategic restructuring in 2025.
HB-200 is a vaccine built from two harmless engineered viruses that teach the immune system to attack the HPV16 proteins inside cervical and throat cancers. It has been tested with pembrolizumab in HPV16-positive head and neck cancer.