Biotech company Siga Technologies announced that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) exercised a procurement option on an existing contract with Siga to deliver approximately $113 million of treatment courses of the firm's oral antiviral drug Tpoxx (tecovirimat).
Siga has provided Tpoxx to the HHS under the existing 2023 agreement; additionally, the New York-based firm signed an agreement, which was announced on July 17, with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional political and economic union, to expand access to Tpoxx to ASEAN's member states.
While Tpoxx has been approved in the U.S. and Canada only for the treatment of smallpox, it is authorized in the European Union and the U.K. for the treatment of smallpox, mpox, cowpox, and vaccinia complications. Tpoxx has been prescribed off-label for the treatment of mpox in the U.S.; access to the drug has been through the Strategic National Stockpile under the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's (CDC's) expanded-access investigational new drug protocol, also referred to as "compassionate use." It has been made available to patients through the U.S. National Institutes of Health's Study of Tecovirimat for Mpox (STOMP).
The project has been supported in whole or in part with federal funds from the HHS, the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, and the Strategic National Stockpile under contract No. 75A50118C00019.
