Shares in Japan's Fujifilm Holdings Corp rose 15 percent on Wednesday after a Chinese official reported the company's active ingredient Avigan anti-flu drug appeared to help patients recover from the coronavirus.
Because of a glut of buy orders, Fujifilm Holdings stock began the day untraded before rising 15.4 percent to 5,238 yen, the highest amount allowed during the day's trading.
Fuji's stock first jumped 8 percent in February, when Japanese health minister Katsunobu Kato approved the drug - originally developed to treat flu - in the battle against COVID-19.
The trials using the drug as a COVID-19 therapy showed "very positive clinical results," said one official at a news conference.
A trial involving 80 cases conducted by a Shenzhen hospital and a review of 120 cases led by Zhongnan Hospital at Wuhan University both found the drug shortened patient recovery time.
Avigan, also known as Favipiravir, is manufactured by a Fujifilm subsidiary with a health-care arm even though it is best known for its cameras. In 2014 the drug was approved for use in Japan. Fujifilm produced Avigan and licensed the favipiravir patent to Chinese pharmaceutical company Zhejiang Hisun.
The Japanese company told AFP that it was not interested in the clinical research in China, but "as for Avigan, we received requests for supply from many countries while the Japanese government asked us to study whether we should step up production."
Zhang Xinmin, director of China National Center for Biotechnology Development said that "Avigan has a high degree of safety." The remarks were focused on the positive results of the clinical trial of 200 COVID-19 patients in Wuhan and Shenzhen, where Avigan patients recovered approximately two days earlier on average compared to those who were not, and fewer patients required respiratory assistance.
In middle February this year, Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, which signed a patent licensing agreement with Fujifilm for the generic drug Favipiravir obtained permission from the Chinese health authorities to perform clinical efficacy trials against COVID-19, as reported by Reuters at the time.
Favipiravir was supplied by the Japanese government in 2016 as an emergency aid to combat the Ebola virus outbreak in Guinea.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the spread of coronavirus in China dramatically slowed to double-digits, with a total of 81,086 cases. In China, more than 3,200 people died from COVID-19, and another 4,713 died in other parts of the world.
Meanwhile, Fujifilm's shares closed 19.51 percent higher at $47.90 in over the counter market late Tuesday.
