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.

More than a year ago, hit by a surprise complete response letter from the FDA, Immunomedics bid its then-CEO, Michael Pehl, adieu and began a 15-month quest to resolve the manufacturing issues cited in the CRL and seek a new leader — all the while moving forward with a Phase III study on its lead drug for metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

Today the biotech said their stars are finally aligning. Not only is Novartis Oncology vet Harout Semerjian coming on board as CEO to steer what they believe will be a smooth sail to a new PDUFA date in June, Immunomedics has also been informed that their late-stage trial can be stopped early due to “compelling evidence of efficacy.”

German drug discovery company Evotec — which has a thriving rolodex of biopharma partners such as Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Sanofi, and Takeda — is now venturing into gene therapies.

The company swallowed Seattle-based Just Biotherapeutics, a company focused on reducing the cost of manufacturing protein therapies last year. It is now setting up a dedicated R&D site for gene therapies in Austria, in an effort to achieve a “modality-agnostic” repertoire — small molecules, biologics and now gene therapies.

Four months after an intercontinental merger, Menlo Therapeutics is counting yet another pair of trial failures — ones with significant consequences for the companies, their shareholders and the drug.

In two pivotal Phase III trials, Menlo’s lead drug serlopitant failed to treat pruritus associated with prurigo nodularis — basically itchiness from a particular skin disease that causes red lesions on a person’s arms or legs. Serlopitant has long been the company’s only drug and as recently as 2018, it looked promising enough to support a stock price of $37. In April of that year, a Phase II failure demolished the stock price overnight: $35 to $9. Other subsequent stumbles trickled the ticker down to just above $2.