Chinese biotech firm censured for false claim on Gilead’s coronavirus drug

A Chinese biotech company which claimed to be able to manufacture an experimental drug from Gilead Sciences, with the potential to treat the novel coronavirus, was censured for disclosing inaccurate information.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange said in a statement on Sunday that BrightGene Bio-Medical Technology has not gained approval from China’s drug regulator to make the drug known as remdesivir, which is seen as the leading candidate in the race to find a treatment for the coronavirus that has now sickened more than 88,000 and killed over 3,000.

BrightGene also has not been licensed by the patent owner – Gilead – to make the drug, nor has it obtained “the relevant qualifications” for mass production of the therapy, according to the stock exchange. Shares fell by the daily limit of 20 per cent intraday on Monday.

Gilead’s experimental drug, which has not been licensed or approved for use anywhere in the world, is being tested in clinical trials at hospitals in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, as well as in other Asian nations.

BrightGene’s announcement on February 12 that it had managed to manufacture remdesivir in mass quantities garnered global headlines and sent its stock up nearly 60 per cent last month to touch a record high. The stock exchange’s reprimand comes as concerns grow that researchers and drug makers in China and elsewhere are seizing on the global panic around the growing epidemic to get attention for less-than-credible scientific work.

BrightGene, for example, had only been able to make remdesivir in a small quantity for clinical research and not commercial production and its elision of this difference led to the spread of “unclear, inaccurate information”, said the stock exchange.