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MILAN, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Italian biotech firm IRBM, which
is cooperating with British drugmaker AstraZeneca in
developing a COVID-19 vaccine, could be listed on the stock
exchange, its chief executive said on Monday.
"Why not?", Piero Di Lorenzo told Italian newspaper Il
Riformista, answering a question on whether the stock exchange
could be in the company's future.
"Many big companies would like to enter our capital. We are
receiving interest from all over the world and I don't rule out
any option," he said, adding however that such a decision was
not currently a priority, given the focus on the vaccine.
Italy could have its first shots of the vaccine by the end
of November, IRBM said earlier this month.
The group has already produced tens of thousands of vaccine
doses for the trial stage and has the potential to produce up to
10 million doses a year.
However, it does not have a production contract with
AstraZeneca yet "but it is likely to, in the future", Di Lorenzo
said.
Earlier this month AstraZeneca resumed global trials of its
experimental coronavirus vaccine, which had been briefly put on
pause due to a serious unexplained side effect in a participant
in Britain.
It is still waiting for the U.S. drug regulator to approve
the restart of the clinical trial in the United States.
"The lack of correlation between the illness and the vaccine
was immediately clear and the independent scientific committee
quickly acknowledged it," Di Lorenzo said.
(Reporting by Elvira Pollina, editing by Giulia Segreti and
Susan Fenton)
