Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic who was recently deported from Australia due to his coronavirus vaccine status, is co-founder and majority shareholder of a biotech firm developing a Covid treatment.
The Serbian tennis champion has an 80 per cent stake of Danish biotech firm QuantBioRes, the company's chief executive told on January 19 (Wednesday).
"He is one of the founders of my company we founded in June 2020," the chief executive of QuantBioRes, Ivan Loncarevic, told a news agency.
Started back in 2010
CEO Loncarevic, who described himself as an entrepreneur, said the investment was made in June 2020 but declined to say how much it was.
"We aim to develop a new technology to fight viruses and resistant bacteria and we decided to use Covid as a showcase," Loncarevic said.
"If we succeed with Covid, we will succeed with other viruses."
QuantBioRes has about 11 researchers working in Denmark, Australia and Slovenia, according to Loncarevic, who stressed the company was working on a treatment, not a vaccine. The company’s website says it started developing a “deactivation mechanism” for Covid-19 in July 2020.
The company is developing a peptide, which inhibits the coronavirus from infecting the human cell, and it expects to launch clinical trials in Britain this summer, Loncarevic said.
Trials in UK
QuantBioRes is planning to launch clinical trials in the UK in the summer, the CEO said.
The unvaccinated men's world number one flew out of Melbourne after he failed in a bid to stay and play in the opening Grand Slam of the year, where he was targeting a record 21st major title.
Djokovic flew out of Australia on Sunday after losing a legal challenge to overturn the cancellation of his visa by Alex Hawke, the country’s immigration minister, who said Djokovic’s presence in Australia might risk “civil unrest” as he was a “talisman of anti-vaccination sentiment”.
Djokovic may also be barred from defending his French Open title in Roland Garros in May after the French government ruled on January 17 (Monday) that all athletes will have to be vaccinated in order to attend and compete in sporting events.
