Pres­i­dent Trump is tak­ing a very per­son­al in­ter­est in an­oth­er ex­per­i­men­tal drug for Covid-19.

Fri­day af­ter­noon, af­ter he had test­ed pos­i­tive for coro­n­avirus, the White House put out a state­ment say­ing that Trump had tak­en an 8 gram dose of Re­gen­eron’s an­ti­body cock­tail — the high dose that ap­peared to do bet­ter than the low dose in terms of bat­ting down vi­ral loads.

Right af­ter word ar­rived that Trump had tak­en the ex­per­i­men­tal ther­a­py, he was trans­ferred to Wal­ter Reed — news that im­me­di­ate­ly height­ened fears about his con­di­tion. The Wash­ing­ton Post not­ed that Trump and his team de­cid­ed to make the move while he could still walk.

The pres­i­dent’s physi­cians didn’t stop with the cock­tail. Late Fri­day night, the pres­i­dent’s spokesper­son stat­ed that the doc­tors start­ed a course of remde­sivir, the Gilead drug that won the first emer­gency use au­tho­riza­tion from the FDA on mod­est­ly pos­i­tive tri­al re­sults.

New state­ment from WH Physi­cian Sean Con­ley MD re­ports Pres Trump “do­ing very well” tonight at Wal­ter Reed.. “He is not re­quir­ing any sup­ple­men­tal oxy­gen,” and is re­ceiv­ing Remde­sivir ther­a­py, a drug the Pres him­self has of­ten trum­pet­ed. Says he “is rest­ing com­fort­ably.” pic.twit­ter.com/SR1II­wmXrH

— Mark Knoller (@mark­knoller) Oc­to­ber 3, 2020

Ear­li­er in the week Re­gen­eron — led by CEO Len Schleifer and chief sci­en­tist George Yan­copou­los — had stirred a mixed re­ac­tion to its first cut of the da­ta on their cock­tail, es­sen­tial­ly pro­vid­ing proof-of-con­cept da­ta for the drug with­out sol­id ev­i­dence of ef­fi­ca­cy in eas­ing the path of the pa­tients with ini­tial­ly mild cas­es of Covid-19.

While Re­gen­eron of­fered da­ta demon­strat­ing that the drug could re­duce the need for med­ical vis­its among pa­tients with a low im­mune re­sponse, the num­bers in­volved were far too low to of­fer any clear pic­ture reg­u­la­tors nor­mal­ly need for an OK. The use of the drug may in­di­cate that Trump is among the most vul­ner­a­ble group.

Trump, though, has a his­to­ry of tout­ing drugs based on lit­tle to no ev­i­dence they work. He took hy­droxy long af­ter the da­ta point­ed to its in­ef­fec­tive­ness. And he pushed the FDA to pro­vide an emer­gency OK for con­va­les­cent plas­ma on thin ev­i­dence that it could work to fight the virus.

Trump’s re­sponse to the Re­gen­eron cock­tail, re­al or sim­ply self-di­ag­nosed, could have enor­mous con­se­quences for the biotech — though adding remde­sivir could make it near im­pos­si­ble to tease out a re­sponse now. The star an­ti­body drug mak­er is seek­ing an emer­gency OK and may soon have the pres­i­dent in their cor­ner if he pulls through quick­ly.

Any se­ri­ous set­backs from here, though, could threat­en to turn Trump in­to an in­flu­en­tial op­po­nent.

So far right now, the pres­i­dent is a very big N of 1. And the ini­tial mar­ket re­sponse is all pos­i­tive. Re­gen­eron’s stock surged 5% af­ter hours Fri­day — not bad when you start with a mar­ket cap of $60 bil­lion.

Trump him­self of­fered a late-night thumbs up:

Go­ing welI, I think! Thank you to all. LOVE!!!

— Don­ald J. Trump (@re­al­Don­aldTrump) Oc­to­ber 3, 2020

Bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies don’t typ­i­cal­ly like get­ting com­pas­sion­ate use re­quests for their drugs, see­ing lit­tle up­side when they work and a big down­side when they don’t. But as Schleifer told Katie Thomas at the New York Times: “When it’s the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, of course, that gets — ob­vi­ous­ly — gets our at­ten­tion.”

Al­so of note: Trump had a choice in ex­per­i­men­tal an­ti­bod­ies. Eli Lil­ly tout­ed its ap­proach be­fore Re­gen­eron ar­rived on the scene, and their ther­a­py — which dis­ap­point­ed a num­ber of an­a­lysts on the first snap­shot of da­ta — didn’t make the cut. That can’t sit well at the phar­ma gi­ant.

In ad­di­tion to the cock­tail, Trump al­so is tak­ing zinc, vi­t­a­min D, famo­ti­dine, mela­tonin and a dai­ly as­pirin.

For a look at all End­points News coro­n­avirus sto­ries, check out our spe­cial news chan­nel.

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.