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Biosecurity News in Brief
NIAID Awards Additional Funding for Smallpox Antiviral; DTRA Awards $8.3 Million for Research into Broad-Spectrum AntibioticsBy Nidhi Bouri, September 29, 2008 On September 18, 2008, SIGA Technologies, Inc., announced that it received from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) an award for an additional $20 million to accelerate the development of its smallpox antiviral drug ST-246.1 This award will supplement SIGA’s existing $16.5 million NIAID contract and will “be used to accelerate process development related to large-scale manufacturing and packaging of the drug and commercial-scale validation.”1 In related countermeasure news, SRI International announced that DoD’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) awarded SRI a three-year, $8.3 million contract to facilitate preclinical research in developing broad spectrum antibiotics to be used against a range of bioterror agents including anthrax, tularemia and plague.2 Under the terms of the contract, “SRI will…develop compounds from its proprietary bis-indole drug platform for both prophylaxis and treatment of biological warfare agents.” The bis-indole platform is a “new class of drugs based on compounds found in cruciferous vegetables that have excellent safety profiles.” Bis-indol drugs have already proven effective in cancer treatment and prevention, and have been shown to have very few side effects.2 References
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