It may be the ultimate silver lining story in a week that has seen record stock market declines. The race to develop a vaccine for C0V-ID19, otherwise known as the new coronavirus, has seen a number of bio-tech firms’ share price hit the roof.

IBio (NYSE:IBIO) announced last week that it would be working on a vaccine in it’s Texas lab in conjunction with Beijing-based CC Pharming. The lab started in 2010 and was partially funded by the US Defense Department. It’s leaders were involved in developing a vaccine for MERS. The stock has soared from $0.31 to $2.49. It has traded an astonishing 400,000,000+ shares in just the last 2 days – it was trading less than 3 million shares a day for most of January.

Oral vaccine specialist Vaxart (NASDAQ:VXRT) in San Francisco has seen it’s share price double, as has nanoparticle vaccine developer Novavax (NASDAQ:NVAX) in Maryland.

Closer to home Victoria BC based ImmunoPrecise Antibodies (TSX-V:IPA) announced last week that it had launched a coronavirus vaccine and therapeutic anti-body program in both it’s Canadian and European laboratories. The stock has seen a 20% increase so far, and as a smaller entity, may be flying under the radar screen of US and international investors.