Soon after the September 11th attacks, letters containing powdered anthrax were sent to media agencies and United States Senate offices, exposing hundreds, potentially thousands, of people to deadly anthrax poisoning. After authorities were alerted, 43 people tested positive for Anthrax exposure and sadly, five died. I remember this moment clearly, as I’m sure many of you do, too. I remember imagining the tragic potential for bioterrorism and how different the world was going to be with these new threats in it. Americans demanded a way to prevent terrorists and non-state actors from further weaponizing chemical substances and to better prepare for worst-case scenarios.
Emergent’s work providing the U.S. government with vaccines and therapeutics for public health threats has helped America be prepared and able to help protect its citizens and military personnel in potentially catastrophic situations.
Emergent continues to produce and supply the Strategic National Stockpile with medical countermeasures in support of the U.S. government’s anthrax preparedness strategy. We are also developing nerve agent antidotes to help protect our military from chemical warfare agents, as well as an intranasal treatment for cyanide poisoning for administration by first responders.
We do this because we know that health threats don’t go away just because they’re not in the news. We know that to avoid a disaster, we must be prepared. This is, at its core, what Emergent and its Research and Development team are all about. We prepare for the unimaginable. We go where others cannot—or will not go. And it’s also how I see my team’s work. I’ve spent my career thinking about disaster scenarios, so you don’t have to.
Take Chikungunya for example. A broadly unknown virus, transmitted through a mosquito bite, found in over 100 countries and territories. Chikungunya symptoms include muscle pain, joint swelling, or rash, with some symptoms lasting months or years and there is no long-term treatment.
Emergent acquired PaxVax in 2018 which came with an early-stage Chikungunya vaccine candidate. At the time, it was not a leading pipeline product, but at Emergent we understood its potential to help protect against this disease.
Fast forward almost four years, and our Chikungunya vaccine candidate has progressed through Emergent’s rigorous research and development process and is now entered into Phase 3 studies. Discovering and exploring ways to meet these kinds of unmet health needs is what inspires me and my colleagues at Emergent. It defines our unique place in the biotechnology marketplace. It drives us to advance new therapies and exemplifies our guiding philosophy of protecting and enhancing life.
It’s not just the unheard-of we’re working on. We’re also laser focused on researching a potential vaccine candidate intended to protect against multiple strains of influenza.
Last December, we initiated a phase 1 study of our universal flu vaccine candidate. We research not only for the seasonal flu, but forlong term biodefense and bio preparedness. Imagine if a flu virus were used as a weapon. We haven’t seen this happen yet, but our work is focused on helping the world prepare for catastrophic scenarios.
There’s a lot of alarming public health threats around the world. As we know from our experience over the last two years, life can change on a dime, which is why we work to provide peace of mind with the mission to protect and enhance lives in ways no one realizes. This is what fuels me and my colleagues as we work to help stop deadly diseases in their tracks, solve the once unsolvable, and prevent the unthinkable.
Kelly Warfield is Senior Vice President for Research and Development at Emergent BioSolutions