Monkeypox Vaccine, Drug Pipeline Grows Despite Signs Of Slowing Infections

Most Products Remain In Preclinical Development

20 Sep 2022

• By Alaric DeArment and Ayisha Sharma

Since its emergence in the spring, the monkeypox outbreak has spawned a small but growing pipeline of drugs and vaccines, many of them repurposed smallpox products.

The monkeypox outbreak has spawned a small but growing pipeline of vaccines and drugs • Source: Shutterstock

Since it began spreading in the spring and migrated to the US shortly thereafter, monkeypox has yet to explode from an outbreak into a bigger epidemic, let alone a pandemic, and infection rates are already showing signs of plateauing in many areas. Still, the world isn’t out of the woods yet, with large-scale growth of infections still possible. To that end, a small pipeline of drug and vaccine candidates has emerged, many of them repurposed products originally developed for smallpox, despite some hitches in getting programs off the ground.

The US Centers for Disease Control has reported 21,504 cases of monkeypox in the US, while the World Health Organization...