At the be­gin­ning of the week, many peo­ple hadn’t ever heard of mon­key­pox. By Fri­day, that all changed — and now a hand­ful of biotech com­pa­nies are reap­ing the ben­e­fits.

Emer­gent Bioso­lu­tions’ $EBS stock jumped more than 10% on Fri­day, four days af­ter the com­pa­ny plumped down $225 mil­lion for the rights to Chimerix’s small­pox vac­cine. Chimerix’s stock $CM­RX was up more than 3.8% on Fri­day. And Bavar­i­an Nordic $BVN­RY — which closed a $119 mil­lion deal with BAR­DA to pro­vide the US gov­ern­ment with freeze-dried dos­es of the Jyn­neos vac­cine — was up near­ly 2.5%.

The news comes just a cou­ple days af­ter the first mon­key­pox case was de­tect­ed in the US, and on Fri­day the CDC re­vealed it’s mon­i­tor­ing at least six oth­er Amer­i­cans af­ter they came in close con­tact with an in­fect­ed trav­el­er ear­li­er this month. Cas­es are surg­ing in Eu­rope, where Spain has now iden­ti­fied 30 cas­es, and neigh­bor­ing Por­tu­gal has re­port­ed 23.

Make no mis­take, though: The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is noth­ing like Covid, ac­cord­ing to Nor­man Bay­lor, who once di­rect­ed the FDA’s Of­fice of Vac­cines Re­search and Re­view and now serves as a con­sul­tant.

“The good news is we have a vac­cine. Re­mem­ber with Covid, we had noth­ing. We were start­ing from scratch,” he said.

Mon­key­pox has been around since 1958, when two out­breaks oc­curred in colonies of re­search mon­keys (hence the name). How­ev­er, the first hu­man case wasn’t re­port­ed un­til over a decade lat­er in the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic of Con­go. The US saw an out­break back in 2003, af­ter re­ceiv­ing a ship­ment of an­i­mals from Ghana, which was con­tained with test­ing and vac­ci­na­tion, ac­cord­ing to the CDC.

Be­cause mon­key­pox is sim­i­lar to (but milder than) small­pox, cur­rent­ly ap­proved small­pox vac­cines like Chimerix’s Tem­blex should of­fer some pro­tec­tion against mon­key­pox, ac­cord­ing to Daniel Ku­ritzkes, chief of in­fec­tious dis­eases at Brigham and Women’s Hos­pi­tal in Boston. In fact, most old­er adults are al­ready vac­ci­nat­ed (rou­tine vac­ci­na­tion end­ed in 1972 af­ter the dis­ease was erad­i­cat­ed in the US).

Even though a large pop­u­la­tion re­mains un­vac­ci­nat­ed, both Bay­lor and Ku­ritzkes doubt that the US will need to roll out a wide­spread vac­cine cam­paign to con­tain the cur­rent out­break.

Nev­er­the­less, BAR­DA is pay­ing Bavar­i­an Nordic $119 mil­lion to ex­er­cise op­tions for a freeze-dried stock­pile of Jyn­neos, which cov­ers both mon­key­pox and small­pox. Ad­di­tion­al op­tions for an­oth­er 13 mil­lion dos­es through 2024 and 2025 would add up to $180 mil­lion.

Paul Chap­lin, CEO of Bavar­i­an Nordic, said in an in­ter­view with End­points News that the com­pa­ny has had a long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ship with BAR­DA and is ready for what­ev­er comes next.

BAR­DA’s new op­tion for the Jyn­neos vac­cine is part of a years-old col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bavar­i­an Nordic to cre­ate a vac­cine with a longer shelf-life. So the new deal is quite co­in­ci­den­tal con­sid­er­ing what’s hap­pen­ing in the world, Chap­lin said.

How­ev­er, he was quick to em­pha­size that Bavar­i­an Nordic has an im­me­di­ate stock­pile and the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to pro­duce more. It has over a mil­lion dos­es in stock cur­rent­ly for BAR­DA, most of which is stored at their fa­cil­i­ty in Den­mark.

The com­pa­ny usu­al­ly sells Jyn­neos on an on­go­ing ba­sis, typ­i­cal­ly man­u­fac­tur­ing for or­der as there hasn’t been much in­ter­est in stock­pil­ing for small­pox. How­ev­er, Chap­lin said he ex­pects to be­gin sup­ply­ing EU coun­tries in the com­ing days and is man­u­fac­tur­ing more dos­es as we speak, though he didn’t dis­close any of the de­tails.

“I think gov­ern­ments are tak­ing the emer­gence of new in­fec­tious dis­eases ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous­ly. So I think that’s one thing, which is a pos­i­tive sign,” he said. “There are a num­ber of gov­ern­ments, Cana­da, the Unit­ed States, and ac­tu­al­ly a few coun­tries in Eu­rope [that] have ac­tu­al­ly pre­vi­ous­ly pur­chased Jyn­neos to stock­pile.”

Mean­while, Emer­gent snagged the rights to Tem­bexa, a small­pox treat­ment for all ages that was ap­proved in 2021, with an an­tic­i­pat­ed BAR­DA con­tract in the wings. The com­pa­ny is ea­ger for a come­back af­ter a re­port from the US House se­lect sub­com­mit­tee re­vealed that around 400 mil­lion Covid-19 vac­cine dos­es were like­ly tossed due to cross con­t­a­m­i­na­tion prob­lems at its Bal­ti­more plant.

Should the US need to roll out vac­cines, the re­al ques­tion will be who gets them first, Bay­lor said. British au­thor­i­ties re­cent­ly prompt­ed health­care work­ers and oth­ers who were ex­posed to get vac­ci­nat­ed, ac­cord­ing to a Reuters re­port.

“The sup­ply is not enough to roll out to every­body,” he said. “That would re­al­ly need some dis­cus­sion, and we’re not at that point yet.”

Aa­dia Rana, an as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­aba­ma-Birm­ing­ham, told End­points that it’s un­clear whether those who have been vac­ci­nat­ed against small­pox in the past will need to be re­vac­ci­nat­ed. How­ev­er, William Schaffn­er, an in­fec­tious dis­ease ex­pert from Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty, point­ed out that small­pox vac­cines can pro­vide long-term pro­tec­tion. Like any vac­cine, though, pro­tec­tion di­min­ish­es over time.

“I am re­al­ly quite con­fi­dent that the pub­lic health au­thor­i­ties in the US and Cana­da and in Eu­rope will rather quick­ly bring these var­i­ous chains of trans­mis­sion to a close and it’s an ex­ot­ic event,” Schaffn­er said. “It’s an­oth­er in­di­ca­tion that we live to­geth­er on a very small globe, and that strange in­fec­tions can ap­pear very dis­tant­ly, and all of a sud­den show up in your neigh­bor­hood.”