SIGA wins $433 million contract to boost nation's smallpox defense

SIGA Technologies has won the latest round of its ongoing battle with Chimerix Inc. to supply government health officials with smallpox antiviral courses.

On Monday, SIGA announced that Chimerix had withdrawn its protest over SIGA’s winning contract to supply the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) with 1.7 million courses of ST-246, a smallpox antiviral, to boost the nation’s stockpiles.

SIGA has repeatedly won the $433 million contract to supply the nation with courses of the smallpox antiviral, but Chimerix, a competing firm, has fought the contract every step of the way.

Chimerix withdrew its opposition to the contract after BARDA modified it to remove the option to purchase as many as twelve million additional courses of the smallpox antiviral, which would have been worth $2.8 billion.

For now the agreement with SIGA will move forward, but questions still linger as Congress continues to investigate whether SIGA investor Ron Perelman used his political connections to help secure the deal.

Analysts believe that the investigation will do little to affect the contract as SIGA is currently the only company with a smallpox antiviral.

“The news of a congressional investigation into the award of the smallpox contract to SIGA is one more overhang that needs to be cleared, but it does not change the basic fact that (HHS) wants ST-246 and SIGA is the only company that can supply it,” said Jason Kantor, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets.