Shares in Ireland's Open Orphan vaccine human testing firm climb 352% in 2020

Share leap is on the back of multi-million contracts for the live human testing of a range of vaccines it is carrying out in London on behalf of the UK's health authorities

Cathal Friel, executive chairman of Irish pharmaceutical company, Open Orphan

A small Irish-based laboratory that conducts live trials testing potential Covid-19 and other vaccines for the British government is the biggest winner on the Irish stock exchange this year, with the stock gaining 352% during the pandemic.

That performance puts it up there among the best stock performances across Europe, beating in percentage terms even the gains posted by Germany's BionNTech, led by Professor Ugur Salin, who has helped produce one of the two potentially most successful vaccines.