'Noth­ing es­capes our sci­en­tist­s': A hand­ful of biotechs gear up work on mon­key­pox

Two years af­ter biotech and phar­ma sprung to ac­tion to cre­ate vac­cines and ther­a­pies in record time for the rapid­ly cir­cu­lat­ing Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, a hand­ful of drug de­vel­op­ers and vac­cine mak­ers are con­sid­er­ing their role in pre­vent­ing and treat­ing fu­ture cas­es of the WHO’s lat­est pub­lic health emer­gency: mon­key­pox.

The virus, which can cause painful le­sions, has been record­ed in a lit­tle more than 44,500 peo­ple world­wide, near­ly 16,000 of those in the US, as of a Mon­day CDC up­date. As com­pared to the ear­ly days of Covid-19, the US al­ready has ap­proved vac­cines and a small­pox an­tivi­ral avail­able un­der ex­pand­ed use to curb and treat mon­key­pox.

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