Celltrion Healthcare reaches key milestones in COVID-19 treatment

South Korea's Celltrion Healthcare (Kosdaq: 068270) on Monday announced key milestones in its efforts to fight the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, with the news sending the firm’s share up 14.75% to175,000 Korean won by close of trading.

As part of its emergency preparedness plan to address the outbreak, which has infected over 200,000 people worldwide, Celltrion says it has successfully completed the first step of developing an antiviral treatment to fight COVID-19 and aims to launch a rapid self-testing diagnostic kit.

Celltrion has been selected as a preferred developer for a monoclonal antibody project to treat and prevent COVID-19 by the Korea Centers for Disease Control (KCDC). Korea was one of the first countries to be affected by the global pandemic. Celltrion has identified the library of antibodies sourced from the blood of recovered patients in Korea, which are thought to be involved in neutralizing the virus and may contribute to recovery from COVID-19. These antibodies are undergoing further screening processes to identify those that are most effective in neutralizing the virus causing COVID-19. Once identified these will form the basis of the antiviral treatment to be tested through pre-clinical and clinical trials around the world in the third quarter of 2020.