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 The 18-month contract includes a base value of $12.1 million to
support manufacturing and up to $22.9 million in conditional
funding.
BioCryst's shares rose 8 percent to $9.06 in premarket trading on
Tuesday.
The drug, BCX4430, is being tested in an early stage study in
healthy volunteers. The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is
funding the development of the intramuscular formulation of the
drug.
An outbreak of Ebola killed close to 10,000 people across West
Africa over the last year, with Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone
being the worst affected.
A U.S. patient in treatment for the virus at an NIH facility in
Maryland had improved to fair condition from serious, the NIH said
on Monday.
Private company Mapp Biopharmaceutical and Tekmira Pharmaceuticals
Corp have shown that their Ebola drugs could cure non-human
primates.
The other companies that are currently testing potential treatments
for the infection are GlaxoSmithKline, Sarepta Pharmaceuticals Inc,
Novavax Inc, Merck & Co and Johnson & Johnson.
[to top of second column] |
(Reporting By Samantha Kareen Nair; Editing by Savio D'Souza and
Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)
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