💆 👨‍👧 👩🏾‍🤝‍👩🏽 How coronavirus affects biotechnology stocks 🧑🏽‍🤝‍🧑🏻 🏎️ 👷

To war, to whom mother is dear. Something we did not write anything about coronavirus, but it is terribly interesting: who will earn on the vaccine, panic and hype? We selected the companies that took on the coronavirus and arranged them in order, depending on how strong their stocks were. The stock charts are similar: as soon as the company announced that it was starting to develop something from the coronavirus, the stocks soared, but then fell slightly. We compared the current values with what was before takeoff.

6. Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: GILD) (~ 0%)

The first on our list is Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: GILD). She has one promising anti-coronavirus drug, remdesivir, which the company has developed to fight Ebola. The news writes that this drug was able to cure a 35-year-old patient. In fact, the highest mortality rate in the group of people over 60 years old, so in this case it is not clear - maybe the patient recovered himself? However, already founda company in Suzhou called BrightGene, which stated that it has launched mass production of the active ingredient remdesivir and is already packing ready-made doses. BrightGene shares immediately jumped 20%, reaching the daily price limit allowed on the exchange. In response to this disgrace, Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day diplomatically and judiciously replied that the patent for remdesivir belongs to Gilead, but first you need to prove the effectiveness and safety of the drug for treating coronavirus. Therefore, the company is not going to enter into a patent dispute so far.

Meanwhile, in Wuhan, randomized, double-blinds have already begunclinical studies of remdesivir third phase. The drug is tested in adult patients with mild, moderate or severe respiratory diseases caused by the new coronavirus. In total, it is planned to register 760 patients. Results are expected in April.
Gilead provides the drug for research for free. BrightGene also said it would provide its version of “mainly through donations” during the outbreak if it was given marketing permission.

In general, according to Chinese law in the field of intellectual property protection, in the event of an emergency or in the public interest (and now just such a case), BrightGene can quickly license an analogue of a patented drug. But whether the Chinese authorities will apply this law to remdesivir, especially now that Gilead is offering it for free, remains a question.

5. Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) (~ 0%)

Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) and the National Institute of Health have agreed to develop a coronavirus mRNA vaccine together and will be sponsored by CEPI (Center of Epidemic Preparedness and Innovations). Together they can do it very quickly - in just over a year . It is really fast for developing a drug, but in an epidemic it is a monstrously long time. The development and production of the vaccine took 25 days, and on February 7 it was already ready. Now its safety will need to be checked in the first phase of clinical trials. Then you will need to check the effectiveness. Then approve.

Meanwhile, in the world at the time of typesetting of this text, there are already 73,439 sick and 1,875 deaths. It would seem that Moderna stocks should rise, but something does not grow. What is the matter?
Most likely, the fact is that the developers do not have time to develop now (I apologize for the tautology). It takes 2-3 months for companies to get to the first phase of clinical trials. And then spring will come: they say that in spring, when it gets warmer, the epidemic will completely disappear (though it’s not clear what this assumption is based on). Therefore, it is necessary to test what is already there, not to bother with preclinical trials, but immediately jump to the third phase. After all, the epidemic is in full swing!

And there are also rumors that the lethality of the virus is falling (UPD: the rumors did not materialize). The number of recovered has already amounted to 13,170 people. That is, the virus gets used to the person, domesticates and becomes less and less dangerous? And suddenly, while I am writing these lines, the coronavirus is just in a very mild form?

4. Inovio (35.6%)

Despite all of the above, stocks of Inovio (INO), a DNA vaccine company, have risen in price. The already mentioned CEPI gave the company a grant of $ 9 million, which became known on January 24. On the same day, Inovio shares crawled up to $ 5.24 per share! And then everyone realized that clinical trials needed time and got a little tired. And the stock price returned to $ 4.22, which is also not bad.

3. Vir Biotechnology (38%)

On February 12, Vir Biotechnology (NASDAQ: VIR) announced that it had already found 2 antibodies against coronavirus. She was looking for them in her library of antibodies - she just had a collection of 20 antibodies from people who recovered after infection with other coronaviruses (SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV).

2. Ascletis Pharmaceuticals (38.7%)

If you look at clinicaltrials.gov for clinical trials related to coronavirus sponsored by biotech companies, you will not get much - just 10. Of these, only the first (NCT04261907) will deal with this year's outbreak. It compares which is better - lopinavir or ASC09. Just one clinical trial of two old drugs!

Both drugs come in combination with ritonavir, which is needed in order to slow down the metabolism of lopinavir or ASC09 in the liver and thus increase the concentration of the drug in the blood. Lopinavir and ASC09 are antiviral drugs. Both combinations are used in anti-HIV therapy. What do coronavirus and HIV have in common? Well, for example, they are both viruses.
ASC09 was developed by Johnson & Johnson and then farsightedly licensed by Ascletis Pharmaceuticals for sale in China and Macau in April 2013. The combination of lopinavir and ritonavir is actually a drug called Kaletra, developed by AbbVie and approved back in 2000.

Mirxes

With coronavirus drugs, it’s not so simple, so whatever the noise around the epidemic, drug manufacturers will have to test and approve their drugs for a long time to come. But test systems can be done now - and this is very important in order to implement the most effective strategy to combat the epidemic: quarantine.

For example, on February 14, MiRXES announced that it would begin production of
test kits this week to help Singapore quickly and accurately diagnose SARS-CoV-2. Now MiRXES's performance is 100,000 tests, but can be increased to 250,000 per week, if necessary. And by the way, on LinkedIn there’s just an announcement that the company is hiring employees! Unfortunately, the company is not traded on the exchange.
But why did we include this company on our list, since it is not traded on the stock exchange? But because we want to delay the appearance of our winner.

1. Novacyt (845%)

But the Anglo-French company Novacyt (EPA: ALNOV) is being traded. And its shares went up 9.5 times after the company said it would launch a coronavirus test next week: as early as January 29, there were 19 eurocents per share, and now it’s 1.89. Perhaps today it is our champion.

D. Bataeva, M. Batin

How coronavirus affects biotechnology stocks