(Bloomberg) -- NRx Pharmaceuticals Inc. soared after an analysis showed that its drug helped severely ill patients who had been treated with Gilead Sciences Inc.'s remdesivir survive Covid-19.
Patients who received NRx's Zyesami after remdesivir had 2.5-fold increased odds of being alive and free of respiratory failure after 60 days, compared with those that received a placebo, the company said Monday in a statement.
The shares gained as much as 54% as of 9:40 a.m. in New York.
Doctors are looking for new treatments for severely ill Covid patients as the U.S. and Europe contend with threatening case surges. Experimental drugs from Merck & Co. and Pfizer Inc. are also hoped to help contend with the upswing, as well as the possibility of another wave powered by the recently discovered omicron strain of the new coronavirus.
The Merck and Pfizer antivirals are intended to be used to keep moderately ill patients out of the hospital. Monoclonal antibody therapies from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Eli Lilly & Co. are also aimed at patients in the early stages of the disease.
However, therapies for severely ill patients are limited, and include the steroid dexamethasone along with remdesivir. NRx's drug could add strength to treatment for patients in respiratory failure, who have few options.
U.S. regulators earlier declined to authorize NRx's drug, also called aviptadil, for emergency use based on existing trial data. NRx said it will submit the new analysis to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in support of emergency use authorization.
“The study provides preliminary evidence that aviptadil is effective in increasing the odds of recovery and survival from respiratory failure among the sickest COVID patients overall and particularly in those whose respiratory failure has progressed despite treatment with remdesivir,” said David Schoenfeld, a Harvard Medical School biostatistician who conducted the study, in the statement.
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