Smallpox Breakthrough
Story Published: Oct 20, 2006 at 6:12 PM PST
By Cathryn Stephens
It's potentially a major breakthrough in bioterrorism defense. A Corvallis biotech lab has developed the first drug ever to show 100% percent protection against the smallpox virus.
It's a disease that was eradicated decades ago, but smallpox is considered one of the top biowarfare threats today. This new drug could wipe out that threat.
SIGA-246 promises to safeguard the population from a smallpox bio-warfare attack, according to company officials in Corvallis.
"We think it's huge," said Dennis Hruby, the chief scientific officer with SIGA Technologies. "It was a horrible dread disease, and having a drug on the shelf that will prevent this from ever happening again I think is a gigantic insurance policy that we're all going to be very happy about."
Hruby says the drug proved 100% effective in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention test, protecting monkeys from the smallpox virus with no side effects.
"For this kind of drug you want a really safe drug because you're talking about a drug to prevent a disease that doesn't exist and so safety has to be very high on the list," said Hruby.
Inside the SIGA lab in Corvallis there are 50 researchers, including 16 PhD's. Along with the smallpox project, they're also researching drugs to treat Ebola and Dengue Fever.
"I get pressure all the time, move the company back east, move to San Francisco. This has just been an outstanding place to work, next to Oregon State, it's easy to recruit good people, it's a really good environment," said Hruby.
Hruby believes SIGA's smallpox drug will be just as effective on humans, both as preventative and as treatment, should it be needed. The main buyer of the drug would be the federal government.
"In a real world scenario what's going to happen is if you have a population you're not going to know who's been exposed, who hasn't and for how long, so what you'd like to do is treat simultaneously with drug and vaccine and protect everybody," said Hruby.
Testing on SIGA-246 is continuing, but the U.S. government will likely be able to stockpile it before it receives final FDA approval under the Department of Homeland Security's Project Bioshield.
SIGA hopes to submit its new drug application for approval by the the Food and Drug Administration in early 2009.
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