Every few years, a pub­lic health cri­sis (think Ebo­la, Zi­ka) spurred by a rogue pathogen trig­gers a small-biotech ral­ly, as drug­mak­ers emerge from the wood­work with am­bi­tious plans to treat the mount­ing out­break. In most cas­es, that en­thu­si­asm nev­er quite de­liv­ers.

Things are no dif­fer­ent, as the coro­n­avirus out­break in Wuhan, Chi­na takes hold. There have been close to 300 con­firmed hu­man in­fec­tions in Chi­na, and at least four deaths. Coro­n­avirus­es are a large fam­i­ly of virus­es, which in­clude MERS and SARS. On Tues­day, the CDC re­port­ed the virus was de­tect­ed in a US trav­el­er re­turn­ing from Wuhan.

Shares of Mary­land-based vac­cine de­vel­op­er, No­vavax, which has seen a steady stream of set­backs with its RSV vac­cine and is cur­rent­ly in late-stage de­vel­op­ment with a flu vac­cine, saw its shares $NVAX cat­a­pult on Tues­day — clos­ing up more than 71% at $9.82. The com­pa­ny’s tech­nol­o­gy has al­so been used to de­vel­op ex­per­i­men­tal vac­cines for MERS and SARS.

In an email to End­points News on Wednes­day, the com­pa­ny said it ex­pects to de­vel­op a vac­cine can­di­date from the ge­net­ic se­quence of the Wuhan coro­n­avirus. The stock was down near­ly 16% at $8.25 on Wednes­day morn­ing, af­ter the drug­mak­er al­so dis­closed plans to sell $100 mil­lion worth of shares in a pub­lic of­fer­ing af­ter the mar­ket closed on Tues­day.

Mean­while, mR­NA-fo­cused Mod­er­na al­so un­veiled its plans on Wednes­day. The com­pa­ny is­sued a state­ment say­ing it is work­ing with NIH’s vac­cine re­search cen­ter on a po­ten­tial vac­cine re­sponse to the cur­rent pub­lic health emer­gency. Shares of the Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­sets-based de­vel­op­er $MR­NA — which pulled off a his­toric $604 mil­lion IPO in late 2018 — were up near­ly 9% at 22.80.

“Mar­kets tend to bot­tom with the peak in new cas­es and news flow,” JP Mor­gan an­a­lysts said, as cit­ed by Mar­ket­Watch. “A pos­i­tive bias is ap­pro­pri­ate on phar­ma stocks broad­ly and mak­ers of di­ag­nos­tic kits and pro­tec­tive equip­ment (like gloves).”

An­tho­ny Fau­ci NI­AID

Ther­a­peu­tics will like­ly make the cut be­fore vac­cines do, An­tho­ny Fau­ci, di­rec­tor of NIH’s Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Al­ler­gy and In­fec­tious Dis­eases (NI­AID), sug­gest­ed in an in­ter­view with Bio­Cen­tu­ry.

The agency plans to in­ves­ti­gate the ef­fi­ca­cy of ex­ist­ing an­tivi­rals and mon­o­clon­al an­ti­bod­ies, as well as de­vel­op a ther­a­py us­ing an­ti­bod­ies de­rived from blood drawn from a pa­tient di­ag­nosed in the state of Wash­ing­ton (the trav­el­er) to fight the Chi­na coro­n­avirus strain, he said in the re­port.

Oth­er biotech stocks al­so rose as new coro­n­avirus cas­es came to light.

Shares of a de­vel­op­er of nano-med­i­cines for vi­ral in­fec­tions, NanoVi­ri­cides, jumped more than 150% on Tues­day, but the shares $NNVC pared gains on Wednes­day, falling more than 52% to $4.07. Aethlon Med­ical $AEMD, a de­vice mak­er de­vel­op­ing a he­mo­p­u­ri­fi­er to com­bat vi­ral dis­eases, jumped more than 15% to $2.6. Shares of In­ovio Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals $INO — which is work­ing on a MERS vac­cine — al­so ticked high­er on Tues­day, al­though the stock was in the red on Wednes­day. BioCryst Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, which is de­vel­op­ing a yel­low fever and Mar­burg virus drug that has shown ear­ly promise in coro­n­avirus­es, al­so saw its shares $BCRX rise about 5.5% to $3.09 on Wednes­day.

Max­im Ja­cobs, man­ag­ing ed­i­tor of in­vest­ment re­search firm Edi­son, sug­gest­ed the out­cry over coro­n­avirus­es was mis­placed.

Coro­n­avirus­es typ­i­cal­ly cir­cu­late among an­i­mals, such as camels, cats, and bats. Rarely, there is an­i­mal-to-per­son trans­mis­sion, as is sus­pect­ed in the Wuhan out­break. Many pa­tients af­flict­ed in Chi­na were linked to a large seafood and an­i­mal mar­ket, al­though there are cas­es where pa­tients were not ex­posed to the mar­ket at all, which sug­gests there is “lim­it­ed per­son-to-per­son spread…though it’s un­clear how eas­i­ly or sus­tain­ably this virus is spread­ing be­tween peo­ple,” the CDC said.

One of the many inequalities the pandemic has laid bare is the gender imbalance in biomedical research. A paper examining Covid-19 research authorship wondered out loud: Where are the women?

It’s a question that echoes beyond our current times. In the biopharma world, not only are women under-represented in R&D roles (particularly at higher levels), their achievements and talents could also be undermined by stereotypes and norms of leadership styles. The problem is even more dire for women of color.

A day after Moderna and the NIH published much-anticipated data from their Phase I Covid-19 vaccine trial, attention is turning to AstraZeneca which, according to a UK report, is expected to publish its own early data tomorrow.

ITV’s Robert Peston reported that AstraZeneca will publish the Phase I data in The Lancet. 

AstraZeneca and Moderna represent the two most ambitious Covid-19 vaccine efforts, having set the quickest timelines for approval (though they were recently joined in that regard by the Pfizer-BioNTech partnership) and some of the loftiest goals in total doses. Yet there is even less known about AstraZeneca’s vaccine’s effect on humans than there was about Moderna’s before yesterday. Although, in a controversial move, Moderna released some statistics from its Phase I in May, AstraZeneca has yet to say anything about what it saw in its Phase I trial — a move consistent with the scientific convention to withhold data until it can be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Operation Warp Speed has already handed out 4 of what they once said would be 3-5 major contracts to develop Covid-19 vaccines, but administration officials indicated Monday that more would be on their way.

“The slate is not closed,”  a senior HHS official said on a call with reporters. “We’ve invested in four … but the slate is not closed.”

At the same time, the official indicated that Warp Speed would continue to focus on three technologies: mRNA, viral vectors and protein subunits. That leaves the door open for a wide range of platforms, notably including both of Merck’s vaccine candidates — one of which has already received BARDA funding — and one of Sanofi’s candidates. It appears to preclude, though, the potential for Inovio and Vaxart, among certain other small developers that have hyped their ties to the Trump administration, to be included.