The name of the drug company Gilead Sciences suddenly jumped, its shares rose 16% after the market closed on Thursday, against the backdrop of a media report that provided encouraging partial data from the experiments of the American company Remisevir experimental drug on patients with severe cases of Corona virus (Covid-19).
The (Stat) medical news website said that a hospital affiliated with the University of Chicago was participating in a study of the anti-viral drug, and it was monitoring a rapid recovery from symptoms of fever and respiratory system, as almost all patients left the hospital in less than a week.
"The inclusion of the data needs to be analyzed in order to extract any conclusions from the experiment," Gilead said in an emailed statement.
"The partial data from an ongoing clinical trial are essentially incomplete and should not be used to draw conclusions," U Chicago Medicine Hospital also said in an email.
The university said that information from an internal forum of researchers related to the work being done was published without authorization.
Gilead predicts results from the third stage of the study on patients with severe cases of Covid-19 at the end of the month, and additional data from other studies will be available in May.
There is still no approved drug for the emerging coronavirus, a highly contagious disease that has infected more than two million people worldwide.
The "State" site reported that the U Chicago Medicine Hospital hired 113 volunteers with severe cases of Covid-19 in the Gilead experiment. He added that most of them left the hospital and two patients died.
Interest in the Gilead experimental drug has increased sharply under the Corona pandemic. An analysis of the New England Journal of Medicine last week showed that two-thirds of a small group of patients with severe cases of Covid-19 experienced an improvement in their condition after being treated with a remdiviser drug.
Gilead, which closed at $ 76.54, jumped 16% to $ 89.1 after official trading hours.