By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 26th, 2024
The luckiest company today is Gilead Sciences. After its announcement about the successful coronavirus treatment the company has found, its stock started growing. Right now, Gilead Sciences (GILD) stock is trading at $82.115, or 7.28% up.
The market is in the green today, as investors are becoming more optimistic. After the opening, stocks soared, market indices jumped. Dow Jones futures are 1.99% or 465 points up at the moment of writing, at 23,872.00. Dow Jones Industrial Average has jumped by 474.87 points and is maintaining 24,012.55 at the moment of writing. S&P 500 index has gained 1.82% or 50.99 points. Nasdaq Composite is also slightly up, it has increased by 0.6372% to 8586.73. And this all results from the success in coronavirus treatment.
Stock Market Rebound
For the indices, the current gains mark a rebound after significant falling this week. All of them crashed on Monday, Dow Jones dropped 1.7% EOD, the S&P 500 lost 2%, Nasdaq Composite closed 0.5% down. Yesterday, all of them were down as well. At the EOD, the Dow Jones index was 1.86% down trading at 23,504 levels. S&P500 and Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.2% and 1.4% accordingly.
Stocks are also giving a reason to investors for rejoicing. Especially those of pharmaceutical companies. For instance, Moderna Inc (NASDAQ: MRNA) that is leading the coronavirus vaccine race has seen its shares soaring 13.50% to reach $46.08 by the moment of writing. Inovio Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: INO) shares are 3.80% up, trading at $8.19.
The FANG companies (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) that have been growing since the beginning of the week can not boast soaring right now. For example, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB) stock is 0.78% up at the present moment, at $177.62. But Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) stock is currently down 3.35%, at the $2327.52 level. Netflix Inc (NASDAQ: NFLX) shares are also 4.74% down, at $418.35.
The luckiest company today is Gilead Sciences. After its announcement about the successful coronavirus treatment the company has found, its stock started growing. Right now, Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: GILD) stock is trading at $82.115, or 7.28% up.
Gilead Sciences’ Coronavirus Treatment Proves to Be Successful
Earlier, Gilead Sciences got involved in the COVID-19 vaccine race and suggested its remdesivir could be a treatment for the virus. The company developed the drug to treat Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus infections. However, in dealing with Ebola, remdesivir showed little success. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not yet approved the drug as a cure for COVID-19 but China and some other regions used it and gave positive feedback.
On February 26, Gilead Sciences announced the start of two phase 3 studies to investigate the efficiency of remdesivir. In collaboration with the University of Chicago Medicine, Gilead gave doses of the drug to 125 people with COVID-19 (113 of them with severe symptoms) for five or ten days. Yesterday, the hospital using the drug fixed positive results. As medical news site STAT has reported, nearly all patients treated with Remdesivir were discharged in less than a week.
However, Gilead noted that there is still a lot to work on and it is too early to draw conclusions.
Gilead spokeswoman stated:
“Anecdotal reports, while encouraging, do not provide the statistical power necessary to determine the safety and efficacy profile of remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19. We expect the data from our Phase 3 study in patients with severe COVID-19 infection to be available at the end of this month, and additional data from other studies to become available in May.”
In response to the news, Gilead Sciences (GILD) stock soared.