Probe Sought In Leak On Peninsula Biotech’s Coronavirus Drug: CNN

FOSTER CITY, CA — The leaked conversations of doctors talking up a Peninsula biotech firm’s experimental treatment for the new coronavirus sparked a broad rally on Wall Street Friday.

A Texas lawmaker wants to know if the windfall was good to be true.

Democrat Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who chairs of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, is calling for a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of a leaked video of a meeting leaked to STAT News, CNN reports.

The leak indicated that remdesivir, an antiviral medication developed by Foster City-based Gilead Sciences had shown promise in a clinical trial administered by University of Chicago, according to a report in STAT News published Thursday.

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The report sparked a rally on Wall Street Friday, with the Dow Jones climbing 3%. The S&P 500 was up 2.68% and the Nasdaq 1.38%. Shares of Gilead were up nearly 10%.

Doggett told CNN that "providing information that's designed to impact the stock market is not something that is permitted under federal securities law."

Doggett said wasn’t pointing figures but wants to get to the bottom of any malfeasance, if any occurred.

"That's why we need a thorough SEC investigation," he said.

Gilead spokesman Chris Ridley told CNN the Peninsula biotech wasn’t involved in the leak.

"Gilead had nothing to do with the information sourced by STAT from an internal recording out of the University of Chicago hospital," Ridley wrote to CNN in an email.

Remdesivir, developed by Gilead in 2014 to treat Ebola, has been repurposed as a potential COVID-19 treatment option.

The University of Chicago study included 125 infected patients, of which 113 had severe cases. Infectious disease specialist Kathleen Mullane, who is leading the study, painted an encouraging picture of the study in the video STAT News obtained.

"The best news is that most of our patients have already been discharged, which is great. We've only had two patients perish," Mullane said in comments not intended to be made public.

Remdesivir is not a cure and hasn't been represented as such, but the antiviral has been in the spotlight since February, when Bruce Aylward of the World Health Organization said it offered the best hope for treating COVID-19.

"There's only one drug right now that we think may have real efficacy," Aylward said. "And that's remdesivir."

Remdesivir has been used in clinical tests on animals with encouraging results treating Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), both of which are caused by other coronaviruses.

Read more at CNN.