MESO action tonight, page-820

Financial Times article.
Investors digest conflicting studies into Gilead’s potential virus drug

https://www.ft.com/content/1625275b-9981-49f4-b788-661f8243890d

Below is an extract from the article and helps explain why Gileads share price has not made big gains.


Investors are struggling to decipher the significance of clashing scientific studies about the prospects of Gilead Sciences’ potential coronavirus drug, which has been touted as one of the most promising Covid-19 treatments.The company said on Wednesday that a US study run by leading coronavirus task force doctor Anthony Fauci’s team at the National Institutes of Health showed positive results for the drug remdesivir, buoying Gilead’s stock and the entire S&P 500. But hours later, a paper in a prestigious medical journal confirmed that the drug had failed to help patients in its first randomised clinical trial. Results from a trial in Wuhan, China — first reported by the Financial Times last week, now peer-reviewed and published in The Lancet — showed treatment with remdesivir did not speed recovery or reduce deaths from Covid-19.
“Unfortunately, our trial found that while safe and adequately tolerated, remdesivir did not provide significant benefits over placebo,” said Bin Cao, a professor from the China-Japan Friendship Hospital and Capital Medical University in China, who led the research.Hopes that remdesivir could be a prospective treatment for the virus continued to move markets, despite contradictory and inconclusive evidence about whether it works. Shares in Gilead were up 4.4 per cent to $82.15.