LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Top pharmaceutical companies around the world, including GlaxoSmithKline and Gilead Sciences, are increasingly banding together to try and develop vaccines against the new Chinese coronavirus.
According to reports, GSK will contribute its adjuvant platform for pandemic vaccines to the Coalition for the Epidemic Preparedness Innovations in the fight against the 2019-nCoV or Wuhan virus.

By utilising only small amounts of the vaccine antigen, output of vaccine doses can increased, giving researchers a crucial edge in pandemic situations.

The University of Queensland was reportedly already progressing on a 2019-nCoV vaccine programme and GSK's platform would help scientists to conduct key pre-clinical experiments to assess the effectiveness of the vaccine.

In parallel, Chinese officials had begun testing the efficacy of Gilead Sciences's new antiviral drug, Remdesivir, which had originally been aimed at Ebola and SARS, in treating the new virus, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

The trial using Remdesivir would be carried out in Wuhan, where the 2019-nCoV had originated, with as many as 270 people showing mild and moderate pneumonia symptoms due to the sickness to be recruited for a randomized, double-blinded and placebo-controlled study.

As of 1323 GMT, shares of GlaxoSmithKline were 0.7% higher at 1,796.4p and those of Gilead Sciences by 4.48% to $66.05.

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