By BENNETT HALL
Gazette-Times reporter | Posted: Friday, September 19, 2008 12:00 am
Siga Technologies continues to bolster its revenue stream with federal biodefense dollars.
Barely two weeks after landing a $55 million contract to expand its efforts to develop drugs to ward off and treat smallpox, the Corvallis biotech company on Thursday announced an additional $20 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
The new funds will be used to accelerate development of ST-246, a compound aimed at combatting smallpox, considered a potentially serious terrorist threat. Siga is working on both preventive and therapeutic formulations of the drug.
Part of the money will be used to scale up production capacity so that, if the compound is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Siga will be able to provide large quantities to government agencies to protect public health and safeguard troops in the event of a terror attack using the smallpox virus.
The company also hopes to sell the drug to hospitals in the United States and Europe.
The latest grant swells total government funding for Siga's smallpox program to just over $103 million.
"It's nice to get into this league, with this size of contract," said Dennis Hruby, Siga's chief scientific officer. "I remember the days when we used to have to fight and scratch just to get $100,000."
Siga Technologies is headquartered in New York but operates laboratory facilities in Corvallis, where it employs about 50 people.
Bennett Hall can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.