The Biotron Limited (ASX: BIT) share price has rocketed higher on Monday after the release of an update.
In early trade the clinical stage biotechnology company's shares were up as much as 47% to 14 cents.
They have since given back much of these gains but are still up 18% to 11.3 cents at the time of writing.
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What did Biotron announce?
This morning Biotron provided the market with an update on the screening of select compounds against SARS-CoV-2 – the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
According to the release, the company has concluded the first stage of its screenings and found that several compounds have been shown in laboratory cell-culture studies to have antiviral activity against SARSCoV-2.
These assays were run in Melbourne under contract by an Australian NATA accredited clinical trial speciality laboratory, 360biolabs.
A total of 47 Biotron compounds were screened in an industry standard cytopathic effect (CPE) cell-culture assay. The compounds which demonstrated promising activity in the first assay then underwent confirmatory testing in a second anti-SARS-CoV-2 assay.
This led to a subset of 15 compounds that had activity against SARS-CoV-2 being successfully identified.
Biotron's Managing Director, Michelle Miller, commented: "The results to date are encouraging. There is a need for new ways to treat this disease, and Biotron believes that these results open up a promising new therapeutic pathway. The results underscore the versatility of Biotron's approach to designing and developing drugs to target serious virus infections."
What now?
The company advised that its focus will now be on building on this preliminary stage screening program to include a new series of recently designed and synthesised compounds.
Screening of these additional new compounds is expected to conclude before the end of 2020.
Management hopes that within these new compounds there will be potent, druggable compound that can be progressed to testing in animal models of COVID-19 disease and ultimately clinical trials.
Also pushing higher this morning following a COVID-19 related update is the CSL Limited (ASX: CSL) share price. It has signed an agreement to supply Australia with vaccines next year.
