This sounds pretty cool if it works. SIGA technologies, a pharmaceutical company that specializes in creating treatments for biowarfare agents, just received $3 million from the National Institutes of Health to continue studying the anti-smallpox drug, ST-246. According to the company's website, ST-246 works in three ways: as a preventive measure, as a treatment to reduce smallpox symptoms after exposure, and as an adjuvant to the regular vaccine to help reduce complications in immunosuppressed individuals. Apparently, the drug prevents monkeys from catching monkeypox and smallpox. It has also been used to successfully treat an individual with a severe form of eczema, eczema vaccinatum, that mimicks smallpox. This drug could be very exciting because of its three possible uses. Perhaps it could also usher in more multi-use drugs for other IDs as well...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment