As the fastest-spreading Ebola outbreak on record continues to grip the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United States is taking renewed steps to protect its own citizens from the devastating virus, even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to rate the overall threat to the American public as low.
Through extension of an earlier deal with the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has agreed to provide additional doses of Inmazeb, its antibody cocktail Ebola treatment, to the government to assist with U.S. preparedness.
The new pact will see Regeneron provide doses of the drug—which includes atoltivimab, maftivimab and odesivimab-ebgn—through 2031. In exchange, the company is in line to receive roughly $270 million from the U.S. government, the company said in an Oct. 27 release.
Under World Health Organization guidelines for Ebola therapeutics first published in 2022, Inmazeb came strongly recommended—alongside Ridgeback Biotherapeutics’ antibody drug Ebanga—to address the highly contagious and often fatal illness stemming from the Ebola virus.
On the CDC’s page tracking the current Ebola outbreak online, which was last updated Monday, the agency notes that no cases have yet been recorded in the U.S., with the risk of Ebola spreading here “considered very low.”
The outbreak, specifically caused by the Bundibugyo type of the Ebola virus, is also moving more quickly than in previous instances and currently stands as the second-largest Ebola outbreak in history. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that confirmed cases in the DRC had reached 10,000.
Beyond the latest U.S.-facing supply pact, Regeneron noted that it is evaluating maftivimab, which it referred to as the “most potent virus-neutralizing component of Inmazeb,” as a potential treatment against the current Ebola outbreak, for which no therapeutics are currently cleared. The antibody has been tapped for inclusion in the PARTNERS trial, established through a global partnership of ministries of health, researchers, healthcare workers, NGOs and research organizations to deliver potential treatments for Bundibugyo virus disease.
Regeneron first linked up with the U.S. on Inmazeb supply back in 2020, right on the eve of the medicine’s approval, to deliver supplies over 10 years in exchange for $10 million in 2021 and an average of $67 million per year each year of the contract after that. That agreement was set to wrap up this year.
The new BARDA deal follows several other U.S. government preparedness agreements announced in recent weeks, although deals with companies such as Kindeva and Kaléo have focused more specifically on potential chemical attacks.
Kindeva recently snagged a potential $226 million contract with the Defense Department’s Defense Logistics Agency to provide up to 3 million units of its chemical nerve agent antidote autoinjector to the agency, which handles procurement and distribution of resources to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and other government groups.
And Kaléo, for its part, has scooped up a federal contract worth $96.1 million—this time also with BARDA—to help advance the company’s pralidoxime chloride auto-injector from late-stage development toward deployment for national preparedness. Pralidoxime is used to treat exposure to nerve agents, or organophosphate poisoning, which can become life-threatening within minutes.