SIGA Technologies said former chief medical officer Jay Varma’s comments about the company’s experimental mpox drug are “inaccurate and misleading.”
The infectious disease drugmaker had already fired Varma on Sept. 19 after secret recordings emerged of the former New York City public health advisor talking about violating Covid-19 restrictions, which he helped create during the pandemic.
Varma admitted last week to taking part in parties while advising New York’s mayor during the peak of the pandemic. Mug Club, a conservative media outlet run by right-wing commentator Steven Crowder, published the videos.
On Wednesday, Mug Club published another video in which Varma discusses the mpox outbreak and SIGA’s antiviral Tpoxx, or tecovirimat, which is approved in the US for smallpox but is being investigated as a potential treatment for mpox. He called into question the need for additional studies of the antiviral for mpox and said SIGA CEO Diem Nguyen would have to “decide if it’s worth it.”
“It definitely looks like it works, but the people that we need to buy it are not going to be as confident in it because the data doesn’t look as strong as it would have if it were designed in a different way,” Varma said in the video.
This summer, the World Health Organization again declared mpox a public health emergency. The drugmaker has contracts with the US government to supply Tpoxx.
“We need to keep up the people’s belief that the drug works,” Varma said in the video, which is dated Aug. 1. “So that’s why spinning it in the media is helpful. So we want the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, to approve our drug specifically for monkeypox.”
The company said last month that the drug failed a clinical trial in children and adults in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with the endemic clade I version of the virus. The company’s stock slid more than 20% that day. At the time, SIGA said it believed the data “warrant further investigation.” Other studies are ongoing.
In the video, Varma also said: “You can spin them so that people won’t, like, dump the stock, thinking that the company is worthless.”
Through his spokesperson, Varma declined to talk about his commentary on SIGA, though he addressed his comments about violating Covid restrictions. Varma said the videos were “spliced, diced, and taken out of context” and that he takes “responsibility for not using the best judgment at the time” by participating in two private gatherings.
In a statement, SIGA said it is “deeply angered by his comments and behavior, which do not reflect SIGA, the way we do business or our values.”
After the video was published on Wednesday morning, SIGA’s share price $SIGA closed 15% lower. It was up about 2% on Thursday morning.