Emer­gent BioSo­lu­tions has made a name for it­self ever since the late 1990s by mak­ing drugs that are need­ed by the US gov­ern­ment. Mon­day, it took that a step fur­ther, as it en­tered a deal with Chimerix to ac­quire the ex­clu­sive rights to Tem­bexa, a small­pox treat­ment for all ages that was ap­proved in 2021, with a $225 mil­lion cash pay­ment.

The pick­up comes just as Chimerix re­leased its Q1 earn­ings re­port, in which CEO Mike Sher­man said that the com­pa­ny is drop­ping in­vest­ment in an­oth­er pro­gram while cir­cling its wag­ons around the lead drug af­ter hopes for an ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval were dam­aged by reg­u­la­tors. And that will set up a piv­otal tri­al in ad­vance of any ex­pect­ed ap­proval — news that sent in­vestors run­ning for the hills as its stock $CM­RX plunged 60%.

Emer­gent’s SVP of gov­ern­ment busi­ness Paul Williams said that the deal for the small mol­e­cule drug ex­pands its work in the gov­ern­ment’s small­pox pre­pared­ness strat­e­gy. The deal will come to­geth­er with an an­tic­i­pat­ed BAR­DA con­tract in the next three to six months fol­low­ing the clos­ing of this deal. The clos­ing of the deal is con­tin­gent on se­cur­ing that con­tract. Emer­gent will pay Chimerix a $225 mil­lion one-time up­front pay­ment up­on clos­ing, and a to­tal of $100 mil­lion in mile­stone pay­ments. The terms al­so in­clude sales-based roy­al­ty pay­ments.

Tem­bexa, which is an oral an­tivi­ral for­mu­lat­ed as 100 mg tablets, is in­di­cat­ed to treat small­pox in adults, chil­dren and new­borns. When the FDA an­nounced the ap­proval, it not­ed that though the virus that caus­es small­pox was erad­i­cat­ed in 1980, it is be­lieved that it could be used as a bioweapon in the fu­ture.

“The ad­di­tion of Tem­bexa to Emer­gent’s port­fo­lio of med­ical coun­ter­mea­sures builds up­on our core ca­pa­bil­i­ties and lever­ages our long and suc­cess­ful his­to­ry part­ner­ing with the US gov­ern­ment to ad­dress dan­ger­ous pub­lic health threats,” CEO Bob Kramer said. “It ex­em­pli­fies our thought­ful M&A strat­e­gy as part of our 2024 growth plan and po­si­tions us bet­ter to de­liv­er val­ue for our share­hold­ers.”

The ef­fec­tive­ness of Tem­bexa had to be stud­ied in an­i­mals with virus­es that are close­ly re­lat­ed to the var­i­ous virus, be­cause the var­i­ous virus no longer ex­ists.

The pick­up is a win for Emer­gent, right when the com­pa­ny was in need of some­thing pos­i­tive. At the end of April, the long­time CEO and co-founder of the CD­MO died of can­cer, less than a month af­ter re­tir­ing from his role as chair­man of the board of di­rec­tors.

Then, a re­port from the US House se­lect sub­com­mit­tee on the coro­n­avirus cri­sis re­port­ed that the num­ber of Covid-19 vac­cine dos­es tossed due to cross con­t­a­m­i­na­tion prob­lems at its Bal­ti­more plant was more like 400 mil­lion, as op­posed to the much small­er amount orig­i­nal­ly re­port­ed. The re­port al­so al­leged that Emer­gent ex­ec­u­tives tried to sweep the prob­lems un­der the rug, and ig­nored re­ports from qual­i­ty con­trol di­rec­tors say­ing that the site wasn’t fit for the task it was about to take on. Emer­gent has adamant­ly de­nied the re­port’s find­ings.

“To equate these qual­i­ty con­trol ac­tions with a ‘dis­card­ed dose’ fig­ure dis­plays a lack of un­der­stand­ing re­gard­ing the bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing process,” a state­ment said.

Emer­gent has made gov­ern­ment con­tracts its bread and but­ter ever since it land­ed a deal with the US for its an­thrax vac­cine around the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 at­tacks. That was its on­ly drug then, and short­ly af­ter, it re­vamped its man­u­fac­tur­ing sites and ramped up its im­mu­niza­tion pro­gram. Emer­gent land­ed a big $400 mil­lion con­tract with BAR­DA for its an­thrax vac­cine again in Oc­to­ber 2021. It was award­ed a $628 mil­lion con­tract from Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion to man­u­fac­ture Covid-19 vac­cines with no com­pet­i­tive bid­ding back in 2020, which even­tu­al­ly led to the Bal­ti­more mishap.

A lack of diversity in clinical trials has persisted despite decades of initiatives to try to turn the tide.

In a recent review of 17 years of clinical trials, drugmaker GSK found that there were some mismatches between the demographics of its US-based trials and how prevalent diseases were in those populations.

The results, the company says, will help GSK and others design studies that better represent epidemiological rates within races and ethnicities.

German mRNA player BioNTech opened the doors to a new manufacturing facility on Thursday, this one just about 75 miles north of its headquarters in Mainz, Germany.

BioNTech announced on Thursday that it has completed the construction of its first plasmid DNA manufacturing facility in Marburg, Germany. The facility will produce materials for mRNA-based vaccines and therapies along with cell therapies.