SIGA Technologies, Inc. Announces Smallpox Treatment Breakthrough

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SIGA Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIGA) announced today that its lead drug, SIGA-246, is the first drug ever to demonstrate 100% protection against human smallpox virus in a primate trial conducted at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In this study, once-daily, oral administration of SIGA-246 protected cynomolgus monkeys from smallpox disease following intravenous high dosing with smallpox virus. The drug prevented symptoms of disease whether delivered at the same time as the virus or 24 hours later, supporting the drug’s use for both post-exposure prophylaxis and treatment. SIGA-246 completely prevented lesion formation and reduced viral load to non-threatening levels in treated animals with no obvious toxicity. The study was conducted under rigorous bio-safety and -security conditions at the World Health Organization Collaborating Centers for Smallpox and Other Poxvirus Infections’ BSL-4 laboratory located at the CDC in Atlanta and was funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC and the Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency under the supervision of Dr. John Huggins, Chief of the Viral Therapeutics Branch, U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

Back to news