Following the announcement made just a few days ago by Grifols, a manufacturer of plasma products which has been in business since 1909, there has been a huge rise in the stock market. A week after the company said it would start a clinical trial in the United States and Spain to combat the coronavirus, it rose 6.08%, becoming the third largest Ibex company in terms of growth. It was only after Bankia, which had a 14.46% increase that day, and Colonial, which rose 8.3%. While the Ibex rose by 1.31%.
In the middle of the day, Grifols collected around 34.3 million euros from share exchanges. In addition, its shares closed at 29.5 euros although they reached 29.7 euros.
Thanks to the participation of the United States, in mid-April this company will begin to collect plasma from patients in Washington, California, and perhaps in New York, who have been successful in combating COVID-19, and then will treat it and obtain immunoglobulins to help patients overcome this disease. However, it should be noted that this plasma against the coronavirus will start to be produced in July. The agreement includes collaboration in the development of pre-clinical and clinical studies to determine the effectiveness of the therapy.
The multinational wanted to point out that the deadlines are not exact, since what the US health authority FDA (Food and Drug Administration) says will influence them. This is one of the American agencies that will be involved in this project.
Although, it is not only developing its activity in the previously mentioned, but it is also carrying out other projects in our country. Here, in Spain it is trying to obtain a way of diagnosis the disease, based on its own technology TMA (transcription-mediated amplification), which can detect the virus even with greater sensitivity than PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) based techniques. Therefore, it would have the capacity to process 1,000 samples per day. In addition, the tests that would be used are expected to be available soon. This is a clinical trial with plasma from recovered patients inactivated by blue methylene. In this project several public hospitals and donation centers are collaborating.
Grifols stated in a press release that “This innovative cooperation between the public and private sectors represents an excellent opportunity to accelerate the development and availability of a therapy, which, if proven effective, could be used in the fight against this pandemic”.
Grifols is also collaborating with hospital centres to design clinical studies to ensure the effectiveness of certain anti-coronavirus drugs.
In addition, it should be noted that, according to the Catalan company, this would be the first practice specifically carried out to combat COVID-19 from the plasma field. This process of producing plasma proteins would last between one and one and a half months, although in the United States they are already applying plasma transfusions to affected patients.
This is not the first time that Grifols has been involved in this way, as a couple of years ago, in 2018, after the Ebola outbreak on the African continent, the company began to process plasma from people who had overcome the disease in an attempt to heal those who were suffering from Ebola at that time.
The company has also stated that, although there are difficulties in expanding COVID-19 in the American country, the intention is, according to Grifols, “to maintain the activity as far as possible”, and the company’s management has also stated, “our purpose is to maintain activity in our factories and plasma centres”, despite the fact that activity has been halted at some centres due to the disease.
Source: El País
