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Aptamer Group appear to be hot on the heels of Avacta, developing a test using Aptamers as opposed to Affimers. From what I can find out so far, Affimers are superior to Aptamers, but not sure how relevant that is in this setting. Would be interested if anyone has a view or understands the difference between Affimers and Adtamers.

I found this on the Avacta website;

"Aptamers were the first generation of non-antibody affinity reagents, and have had some success – a therapy, Pegaptinib, marketed as Macugen and a biomarker discovery/validation platform called SOMAscan. However, despite over $2Bn investment, the success of aptamers has been limited. This is probably due to a number of shortcomings.

The most obvious of these is that aptamers are physically limited to a small range of conformations, and chemically limited in the type of bonds that can be formed. Their highly charged backbone is self-repelling, making conformational stability difficult, yet it non-specifically binds numerous proteins, making specificity and high background a problem. These limitations, and a limited range of building blocks has meant that aptamers have ultimately fallen far short of what was initially hoped for".

Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky told CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa he expects the company will spend $1 billion on Covid-19 testing in the full year 2020

Very interesting article in NY Times. Not sure of the relevance for SNG but thought worth sharing;

“ Even patients without respiratory complaints had Covid pneumonia. The patient stabbed in the shoulder, whom we X-rayed because we worried he had a collapsed lung, actually had Covid pneumonia. In patients on whom we did CT scans because they were injured in falls, we coincidentally found Covid pneumonia. Elderly patients who had passed out for unknown reasons and a number of diabetic patients were found to have it.

And here is what really surprised us: These patients did not report any sensation of breathing problems, even though their chest X-rays showed diffuse pneumonia and their oxygen was below normal. How could this be?

We are just beginning to recognize that Covid pneumonia initially causes a form of oxygen deprivation we call “silent hypoxia” — “silent” because of its insidious, hard-to-detect nature”

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/opinion/coronavirus-testing-pneumonia.amp.html

Great assessment of the potential. Thanks for sharing. I think I’ll buy some more today! This company is surely about to take off!

Bank of America raises gold forecast by a whopping $1,000 to $3,000 because of zero rates.

GGP is the perfect hedge against the impending stock market meltdown and rising inflation in 2021 !

Thanks for your reply, very helpful and much appreciated. Yes, I have a few GGP in my ISA ;) I’m also quite heavily into AVCT.

I have a decent position in FARN, which I have held since before the COVID opportunity. I have also recently taken a position in Synairgen. I am no expert, so I wondered if anyone had a view on whether these investments are complimentary or if one effectively hedges the other? If Intravenous interferon proves to be beneficial in treating COVID-19 patients, then would this suggest that inhaled interferon is also likely to have some benefit and vice versa ?

hope so. i have 8.7m of these in my ISA. Happy days.

Coronavirus saliva screening gets FDA emergency use approval, Rutgers says

The Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization for a coronavirus test relying on saliva samples developed by a Rutgers University-backed entity, Rutgers said Monday.

The test could increase, by tens of thousands of tests per day, the number of screenings for Covid-19, Rutgers said.

The test was developed by Rutgers’ RUCDR Infinite Biologics and its collaborators, Spectrum Solutions and Accurate Diagnostic Labs.