New article published in Nature Microbiology on the use of Tecovirimat against MPXV

Tecovirimat is efficient against the 2022 MPXV strain circulating in Europe

Delighted to see our work on the efficiency of Tecovirimat on the European Monkeypox virus strain published today in @Nature Microbiology (IF=31). The paper describes isolation, sequencing, phylogenetic analysis and electron microscopy of the MPXV strain currently circulating in Europe. Using our VACV ANCHOR tagged strain, we rapidly calibrated an orthopoxvirus antiviral assay and Tecovirimat dose-response followed by testing susceptibility of the MPXV clinical isolate, showing high efficiency of the compound at nM concentration despite a mutation in the F13L gene homolog, which encodes the target of tecovirimat (VP37). This work has been done in collaboration with Institut de Recherche Biomédical des Armées and Santé publique France (CNR-LE Orthopoxvirus) (Jean-Nicolas Tournier /F Iseni/O.ferraris), Institut Pasteur (E. Simon-Loriere) and SIGA Technologies, Inc. (Doug Grosenbach, Dennis Hruby, Marianna (AnnaMaria) Anesti, PhD). Part of this work is financed by a RAPID program from the Agence de l’innovation de défense