Shares of Dare Bioscience Inc.
DARE,
rocketed 63.1% in very active premarket trading Wednesday, after the California-based health care company said it was awarded a new grant of up to $48.95 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Trading volume spiked up to 18.1 million shares, compared with the full-day average of about 3.7 million shares. The new grant is to support the development and preclinical activities to advance Dare’s investigational reversible contraceptive, DARE-LARC1, toward testing in humans. As part of the grant agreement, DAre agreed to make DARE-LARC1 and any other products available at an affordable price to people in developing countries, or in support of the U.S. educational system and public libraries. The stock has lost 10.6% over the past three months through Tuesday, while the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF
IBB,
has gained 9.4% and the S&P 500
SPX,
has tacked on 6.5%.
