Djokovic in Serbia last week.CHRISTOPHER PIKE (REUTERS)
Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic, current number 1 in the ATP ranking, has bought 80% of the Danish biotechnology firm QuantBioRes, with the aim of developing a medical treatment against covid-19, the executive director of the company told Reuters. company.
The company, which has a technology called RRM for the development of treatments and cures for retroviruses and resistant bacteria, will begin the study of different treatments against the disease.
The tennis star has been involved in recent weeks in a controversy by entering Australia to play the Open without being vaccinated.
Djokovic spent eleven days in Melbourne, six of them detained and in isolation inside a room at the Park Hotel.
The court of the Federal Courts ratified on January 16 the decision to deport the player, who was forced to return to his country.
The Serb also faces a ban from entering Australia for the next three years, albeit with exceptions.
Chief Executive Officer Ivan Loncarevic, who described himself as an entrepreneur, said the investment was made in June 2020 but declined to say how much it was.
QuantBioRes has about 11 researchers working in Denmark, Australia and Slovenia, according to Loncarevic, who emphasized that they were working on a treatment, not a vaccine.
The company is developing a peptide that prevents the coronavirus from infecting the human cell and hopes to launch clinical trials in Britain this summer, it added.
A spokesman for Djokovic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The tennis number one has stoked global debate over the rights of people who choose not to get vaccinated after he was deported from Australia on Sunday night, ruling him out of the Australian Open.
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