Sorrento Shares Take Steep Fall as Company Fires CFO

According to a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Sorrento has terminated its CFO Jiong Shao.

The filing said that Shao’s employment was “terminated in its entirety” and that Najjam Asghar would take on the CFO role until a successor could be found.

Shares of Sorrento fell 9% in after-hours trading on Tuesday, following a 1.5% rise to close the regular session at $12.28.

It was last month that the company licensed a test that could diagnose COVID-19 quickly using saliva. The company had entered into an agreement with Columbia University to license a rapid saliva test for SARS-CoV-2.

Developed by Zev Williams, MD, PhD, and his team at the Columbia University Fertility Center, the COVI-TRACE approach eliminates the extraction step and simplifies overall sample processing. A small sample of saliva is collected in a cup and then placed into a tube containing enzymes and reagents that can detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s RNA. The tube is then placed into a simple heat block or water bath to keep the sample warm throughout the chemical reaction, which takes 30 minutes or less to provide a colorimetric reading based on detection of the presence of the virus.

Preliminary study results were published in a paper by Williams and colleagues at Columbia University Irving Medical Center titled, “Field-deployable, rapid and direct diagnostic testing of saliva samples for SARS-CoV-2,” in MedRxiv on June 16, 2020. The study evaluated the new test in 60 samples, including 30 samples with virus and 30 without. The study found sensitivity and specificity of 97% and 100%, respectively, and the ability to detect as few as 1 or 2 copies of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a microliter of saliva.

Dr. Zev Williams, Director of the Columbia University Fertility Center, stated, “Testing for SARS-CoV-2 needs to be fast, frequent, and far-reaching. We are delighted to work with Sorrento Therapeutics in the hope that COVI-TRACE may be scaled and deployed in the U.S. and around the world to combat the spread of COVID-19.”

Dr. Henry Ji, Chairman and CEO of Sorrento Therapeutics, Inc., stated, “We are building a portfolio of highly relevant COVID-19 solutions that spans diagnostics, prevention, early intervention and rescue therapies. COVI-TRACE will be a key asset in our diagnostic solutions, and we intend to move rapidly to submit an emergency use authorization request to the FDA and prepare for full-scale production. Such a simple, deployable and cost-effective solution, in synergy with our potentially neutralizing antibodies, could become the ‘economy opener’ our country has been waiting for.”

The FDA announced this past weekend however that it has issued emergency use authorization to Yale University’s SalivaDirect COVID-19 diagnostic test, which uses a method to process saliva samples for diagnosing COVID-19 infection.

Yale’s COVID-19 test could reduce the potential market opportunity for Sorrento’s test which sent shares of Sorrento down on Monday as well.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Sorrento Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: SRNE) and have not been compensated for this article.