The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) will spend up to $384 million to help fund and develop Novavax Inc's COVID-19 drug candidate, the group disclosed Monday.
Reports of CEPI's investment pushed shares of Novavax to rise 31.3 percent in after hours session. CEPI, which was established to combat emerging infectious diseases, announced in March that it would put up $4.4 million into ventures with Novavax and the University of Oxford to create potential drugs against the dreaded virus.
COVID-19, the respiratory sickness caused by the novel coronavirus, has infected over 4.15 million people worldwide and claimed the lives of over 282,000, a Reuters tally showed.
Novavax disclosed that the drug it is currently developing shows a strong promise to have a positive effect on this global health emergency. The biotech giant also posted a loss of 58 cents a share on $3.4 million sales, while market observers estimted a loss of 70 cents a share on $1.7 million sales, Refinitv data showed.
Novavax was already granted $4 million by CEPI in March to identify and develop a drug that will fight Covid-19. In early April, it revealed it had identified a drug candidate it labels NVX-CoV2373, which it claimes has already proven a great degree of success in animal trials.
The company's candidate is a "subunit drug," where just a portion of the virus (spike protein) is injected into the human body to make antibodies that can fight against a COVID-19 virus. Novavax is looking to proceed with Phase 1 human lab tests of the drug by middle of this month, and announce initial findings by July.
On Wall Street, Novavax had around 18 million shares that traded hands on 107,752 trades for Monday, on a total float of 57.94 million. After opening the trade at $19.81, shares of the company stayed within a range of $24.60 to $19.62. With today's earnings, Novavax Inc. now has a market cap of $1.42 billion. Its shares have been trading within a range of $26.35 and $3.54 over the last year.
CEPI's extra investment will support the development of NVX-CoV2373, through mid-stage trials and help scale-up mass production, Novavax said, adding that the CEPI grant will be used to scale-up production by potentially allowing it to make up to 100 million doses by the end of the year.
In a media release CEPI chief executive Richard Hatchett said the investment was the biggest the group has ever made. CEPI's drug research and development programs are beginning to show great progress, "so it is very important that we invest today to boost production capacity," Hatchett said.
