Firms to Develop Drug to Fight Chemical Weapons

Baxter International Inc., the world’s biggest maker of blood-disease treatments, won a $19.6-million Defense Department contract along with El Segundo-based Computer Sciences Corp. to develop a treatment for chemical-warfare agents, the companies said Wednesday.

Baxter, based in Deerfield, Ill., and Computer Sciences will work to extract from human blood plasma an enzyme known as butyrylcholinesterase, which has been found to provide protection against nerve agents such as sarin, soman and VX.

The contract is among a series of Pentagon efforts to develop pharmaceuticals involving butyrylcholinesterase as part of a government strategy for guarding against terrorist attacks, said Mark Cooke, senior director for education at PharmAthene Inc., a closely held biotechnology company in Annapolis, Md.

A successful product might generate “hundreds of millions of dollars” in sales, as the U.S. and its allies seek to protect their militaries and civilian populations, said Cooke, whose company is developing a separate butyrylcholinesterase product. Such treatments could be used both before and after exposure to absorb toxins including nerve agents before they cause irreversible damage, Cooke said.

There are now no products commercially available involving butyrylcholinesterase, Baxter spokeswoman Deborah Spak said.

“Until recent times there has not been the need or interest to warrant clinical development and commercial-scale manufacture of the product,” Spak said.

Baxter’s Baxter Healthcare Corp. and the DVC unit of Computer Sciences will be using Baxter’s stocks of human blood plasma to separate out the butyrylcholinesterase necessary to produce a drug, Spak said.

On the New York Stock Exchange, shares of Computer Sciences fell 78 cents to $46.64. Baxter fell 24 cents to $34.72.