The Mesoblast Limited (ASX: MSB) share price is surging this morning after making an announcement about its COVID-19 trial.
Here’s what happened
Mesoblast advised today that its COVID-19 trial has received a recommendation to continue from the independent data safety monitoring board (DSMB) after completing the second interim analysis of the trial.
The trial is a randomised controlled phase 3 trial of remestemcel-L in patients with moderate to severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) due to COVID-19 infection.
The analysis was performed on the trial’s first 135 patients, which was 45% of the total target of up to 300 randomised patients.
Mesoblast chief medical officer Dr Fred Grossman said: “We are pleased with the recommendation by the DSMB, as we seek to confirm whether remestemcel-L improves survival in ventilated COVID-19 patients with moderate to severe ARDS. Patients who have co-morbidities or are older are likely to continue to be at high risk of ARDS and death, even if COVID-19 vaccines become available. This is why having a potential treatment that reduces mortality in these patients is so important.
Why is this important?
Mesoblast explained that ARDS is the principal cause of death in COVID-19 infect and is thought to be due to a dysregulated immune response in the lungs to COVID-19. Deaths continue to increase in ventilator-dependent ARDS patients as COVID-19 cases continue to surge globally. Despite improved treatment and earlier intervention in hospitalised COVID-19 patients overall, the mortality rate in COVID-19 ARDS patients who are over 60 years old remains more than 60%.
Time to buy Mesoblast shares?
The Mesoblast share price is up more than 5% right now. If the recommendation was for the trial to end then obviously that would be bad news.
But I don’t like investments where the outcome is either great or terrible, so Mesoblast (and others like it) are not the type of ASX shares that I like to target. If I were going for healthcare businesses, I prefer something with good potential for regular demand for products with good pricing power. CSL Limited (ASX: CSL) is a good example of this. There are also other ASX growth shares like Pro Medicus Ltd (ASX: PME), but that one is now very highly valued.
