PharmAust shares soar following promising COVID-19 treatment results
The results of promising preliminary experiments by PharmAust Limited (ASX:PAA), indicating the suppression of a significant proportion of COVID-19 particle cell cultures resulted in the company’s shares trading 50% higher as the market opened on Thursday.
PharmAust is a clinical-stage oncology company with expertise across a broad range of areas, and it has been conducting preliminary work investigating the effects of the group’s lead drug candidate monepantel (MPL) and monepantel sulfone (MPLS) on cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 in tissue culture.
These experiments have been undertaken for PharmAust by the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research virologists in accredited and controlled safety facilities at the Institute in Melbourne and have demonstrated that both infectivity and replication of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles can be suppressed by between 50%-95% in cell cultures.
The lowest inhibition value from the TCID50 assay was approximately 50% and the highest inhibition value was approximately 95%.
Virologists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute demonstrated that in preliminary experiments both monepantel and monepantel sulfone reduced the capacity of SARS-CoV-2 to replicate as well as the capacity of SARS-CoV-2 to mature into infectious virus particles.
Importantly, relatively low concentrations of monepantel blocked the infectious capacity of SARS-CoV-2 in tissue culture.
Experimental repeats were conducted for each experiment in quadruplicate.
Further validation of results imminent and patent application lodged
PharmAust plans further validation of these preliminary results as soon as possible.
Based on the above findings, PharmAust has moved to broaden and extend its Intellectual Property in the area of anti-viral activity through the filing of a patent application specifically covering MPL in the treatment of COVID-19.
In response to these developments, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researcher Professor Marc Pellegrini (MBBS BSc FRACP PhD FAHMS), joint head of the Institute’s Infectious Diseases and Immune Defence division and an infectious disease clinician at the Royal Melbourne Hospital said, “These early signs demonstrating that monepantel can block SARS-CoV-2 infectivity in vitro are encouraging.”
PharmAust’s Chief Scientific Officer Dr Richard Mollard outlined some of the processes involved in furthering research in saying, “PharmAust is excited by this early data set and is looking forward to continuing the project with the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.
‘’Continuation will involve repetition of these experiments for validation and comparisons with other mTOR inhibitors and treatments currently in the clinic”.
Latest articles on PharmAust Limited
More Commentary
Creso Pharma’s vital competitive advantages key to the future
06-07-2021
BDA finishes fiscal 2021 on a high
01-07-2021
Why CPH investors should care about The HighBrid Lab
24-06-2021
Creso and Red Light Holland to merge into The HighBrid Lab
17-06-2021S3 Consortium Pty Ltd (CAR No.433913) is a corporate authorised representative of LeMessurier Securities Pty Ltd (AFSL No. 296877). The information contained in this article is general information only. Any advice is general advice only. Neither your personal objectives, financial situation nor needs have been taken into consideration. Accordingly you should consider how appropriate the advice (if any) is to those objectives, financial situation and needs, before acting on the advice.
Conflict of Interest Notice
S3 Consortium Pty Ltd does and seeks to do business with companies featured in its articles. As a result, investors should be aware that the Firm may have a conflict of interest that could affect the objectivity of this article. Investors should consider this article as only a single factor in making any investment decision. The publishers of this article also wish to disclose that they may hold this stock in their portfolios and that any decision to purchase this stock should be done so after the purchaser has made their own inquires as to the validity of any information in this article.
Publishers Notice
The information contained in this article is current at the finalised date. The information contained in this article is based on sources reasonably considered to be reliable by S3 Consortium Pty Ltd, and available in the public domain. No “insider information” is ever sourced, disclosed or used by S3 Consortium.
