Promising test results for SIGA's smallpox drug
The prospect of terrorists infecting the population with smallpox is taken seriously by those in charge of biodefense;
New York-based SIGA Technologies(NASDAQ: SIGA) announced the successful results of two independent primate trials of its smallpox drug SIGA-246. SIGA says that SIGA-246 provides complete protection against human smallpox virus in nonhuman primates. The current trials involve infection with high doses of monkeypox virus, which may be lethal in primates if left untreated. SIGA-246 proved to offer complete protection against disease symptoms.
The first monkeypox virus study was sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and conducted at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In this study, all monkeys in the two groups receiving SIGA-246 (different dosages) were completely protected from disease.
The second study was conducted at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) and was funded by the Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency under the supervision of Dr. John Huggins, chief of the Viral Therapeutics Branch. In this second study, two groups of nonhuman primates received SIGA-246 orally starting either one day post-infection or three days post-infection. Both treatment groups were completely protected from disease.
Dr. Dennis Hruby, chief scientific officer of SIGA, said: “Taken together with the recent breakthrough results from the smallpox virus study, the data continue to support the use of SIGA-246 as the first drug available to prevent and treat disease caused by pathogenic poxviruses without significant side effects.”
SIGA, an innovative company, bases much of its drug development on its research in the field of bacterial surface proteins and proteolytic maturation pathways.
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