
Emergent awarded $379M+ to supply the DOD with a skin decontamination lotion
Maryland-based manufacturer Emergent BioSolutions is kicking off the new year with a multimillion-dollar contract to supply a lotion used in case of chemical attacks.
Emergent said on Thursday that it has inked an “indefinite-delivery” and “indefinite-quantity” procurement contract to supply RSDL kits, or reactive skin decontamination lotion, for use by all branches of the US military. The contract’s value is worth up to $379.6 million, and Emergent’s Canadian subsidiary will serve as the subcontractor to supply the lotion kits to the DOD. Emergent’s stock $EBS was up around 9% on Friday afternoon.
The contract began in December 2022 and has four, single-year option renewals. The RSDL kits themselves will be used to remove or neutralize chemical warfare agents from the skin. This can include sarin or mustard gas and T-2 toxin, among other chemicals.
According to an Emergent spokesperson in an email to Endpoints News, the contract is estimated to manufacture over 13,000 cases of RSDL active kits and over 1,300 cases of training kits.
“This contract is another example of our longstanding partnership with the US government and our unique capability to help develop and deliver medical countermeasures for a variety of threats, including biological and chemical attacks, for the US and allied governments. Specific to RSDL, it builds upon our 10-year relationship with DoD to help protect American service members,” said Paul Williams, senior vice president, government medical countermeasures at Emergent, in an emailed statement to Endpoints.
Emergent has been contracted by the US government since the 1990s to manufacture drugs and products for the defense space.
Last year, the manufacturer nabbed the global rights for Tembexa from the North Carolina-based biotech Chimerix, along with its 10-year BARDA contract to produce 1.7 million doses of the drug. The contract was valued at $680 million, as well as a “product procurement” valued at $115 million. Additional options were valued at $551 million, which can be committed at BARDA’s discretion.
Emergent also announced in November that it was handed a $10 million research award from the DOD’s Congressional Directed Medical Research Programs to evaluate the efficacy of its single-dose chikungunya virus vaccine candidate.