Anixa Discovers First Covid-19 Therapeutic Candidate; Stock Surges

(RTTNews) - Anixa Biosciences Inc. (ANIX) said Monday that, with its partner OntoChem GmbH, it has identified its first therapeutic candidate against Covid-19. It has advanced the compound into biological testing.

In Monday pre-market trade, ANIX is trading at $2.77, up $0.95 or 52.20 percent.

The company believes that drugs targeting the molecular biology of SARS-CoV-2 will produce more powerful medicines than the drugs currently being evaluated in trials, most of which were repurposed from other diseases.

The company expects the compound will disrupt the interaction of the virus's endoribonuclease with a host human protein that is necessary for the virus to replicate upon infection. Disrupting this protein-protein interaction is expected to dramatically reduce or eliminate the virus's ability to cause disease.

The biological testing will initially determine how well thecompound binds to the endoribonuclease, and then how well this translates into reducing viral replication in human host cells, the company said.

Anixa said it expects to identify several additional drug candidates that will be evaluated biologically, after which it will choose which compound to advance into animal testing. If all goes as planned, drug discovery activities could be completed within six months.