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Mpox has proven to be a major public threat since its resurgence globally during the COVID years.
As Bio.News reported, “On Aug. 14, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an international emergency as a highly virulent strain of mpox spreading from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” The highly virulent strain of mpox, clade 2 (endemic to West Africa), has led to more than 100,000 cases in 122 total countries, including 115 countries where mpox was not previously reported, which includes the U.S. which reported 33,000 cases of mpox.
Additional clade variants of the mpox virus are also spreading and mutating, reflecting the reality that addressing mpox on a global scale will continue to be a pressing public health issue.
As part of this dialogue, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted an event, “Capitol Hill Steering Committee on Pandemic Preparedness and Health Security: The Current Mpox Crisis and Congress’s Role in Protecting the U.S. from Health Security Threats.”
Watch: Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security event on the mpox crisis, Sept. 18, 2024
Phyllis Arthur, Executive Vice President and Head of Healthcare Policy and Programs at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), provided the industry perspective on addressing the current mpox crisis and lessons learned (or not) from the 2022 mpox outbreak.
Pandemic preparedness is critical during ‘peacetime’
“There is a huge interest on the part of the private sector to take the learnings from responding to [the mpox outbreak of] 2022 and do some of those preparedness activities that we could be doing that would allow us to be a little more forward deployed and be ready,” said Arthur.
And indeed, industry has been an active partner for international healthcare institutions when it comes to addressing the global mpox outbreaks. For example, BIO member Bavarian Nordic was successful in getting more than 250,000 doses of their mpox vaccine JYNNEOS to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Sept. 5, just three weeks after the WHO declared mpox an international emergency.
Unfortunately, there is still a great deal of catch-up needed when it comes to getting this year’s outbreak under control.
“We still are kind of redoing what we did before, which is [responding to outbreaks] on the fly, [even] when we all said, as a lesson learned, we could have been doing those things in (what I’ll call) peacetime,” Arthur explained. “And so you can’t take your eye off the ball for something that obviously is now demonstrating its ability to cause outbreaks year after year.”
The biotech industry is actively working on solutions. Moderna is working on a new mpox vaccine candidate that has shown improved efficacy compared to existing vaccines in a trial using monkeys. A clinical trial of the vaccine in humans is now underway.
However, for effective outbreak and pandemic preparedness, all parties need to be involved, from industry to government to community and beyond. Pandemic preparedness, as Arthur explained, cannot be fully implemented when only one part of the global team is actively taking preemptive steps for future outbreaks.
“How do we get people to understand the need to do that?” Arthur asked. “Industry is quite willing to do that…. [we are ready to] sit down with Africa CDC, talk through the populations they think are essential when a clade changes populations [and] to do clinical trials for vaccines or therapeutics. We’re scrambling to understand how to do some of the developmental work, because we’re all trying to look at the data at the same time.”
The role of public-private partnership in addressing the mpox crisis
The Biden administration recently announced a pledge of 1 million mpox vaccine doses and at least $500 million to African countries to support their response to the outbreak. This translates to a $63 million award for Bavarian Nordic, allowing them to manufacture the doses.
“We must now move quickly to face mpox,” President Biden said, as reported by Reuters.
“As a long-standing partner with the U.S. government, we applaud their strong leadership in securing the long-term availability of vaccines for public preparedness,” said Paul Chaplin, President & CEO of Bavarian Nordic. “While the current mpox outbreak is a reminder of how vulnerable the international community remains to infectious diseases, we are dedicated to assist all governments and organizations, not only in the current public health emergency, but beyond to ensure the equitable access to our smallpox/mpox vaccine.”
Ultimately, pandemic and outbreak preparedness is the best option for global populations, even if it, at times, can feel like fighting an invisible force.
“Everybody’s goal is to avoid a pandemic,” Arthur asserted. “And the way to avoid a pandemic is actually to have a thoughtful, coordinated, multi-stakeholder, global response where you can actually save lives.”
