MADRID/LONDON -
Spain Pharma Mar <PHMR.MC> is looking at listing on New York's Nasdaq market, joining a flurry of biotech companies aiming to tap investors' voracious appetite for the sector as it tests one of its therapies to treat COVID-19.
The move comes several weeks after the company started mid-stage human trials of cancer drug Aplidin in COVID-19 patients.
The preliminary tests were "super encouraging", although the sample is still too small to be statistically significant, Chairman Jose Maria Fernandez Sousa-Faro told Reuters.
Pharma Mar's Madrid shares have almost tripled to 7.51 euros ($8.41) since mid March, taking its market valuation to 1.67 billion euros ($1.87 billion).
The pharma industry's search for a treatment for COVID-19 has sparked a parallel hunt among investors for the companies most likely to succeed.
That has seen the Nasdaq's biotech index <.NBI> soar about 25% in the second quarter, its best quarterly performance in nearly 20 years, to reach a total value of $1.2 trillion.
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