PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pennsylvania, June 10, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:INO) announced today that the medical arm of the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) will fund the further development of Inovio's new commercial intradermal delivery device. DTRA's Medical CBRN Defense Consortium will provide $8.14 million to support Inovio in developing a small, portable, battery-powered intradermal device branded as CELLECTRA® 3PSP to be used in the administration of Inovio's vaccines and therapies which include DTRA developed products. In addition to the development of CELLECTRA 3PSP, the new award will fund the investigation of DNA vaccines developed by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) using the new device.
Dr. Kate Broderick, Inovio's Senior Vice President of R&D and the Principal Investigator of the program, said, "We are honored that the U.S. Government considered highly of Inovio's track record of innovation and is providing this funding to support the further development of our commercial intradermal vaccine delivery device. Our CELLECTRA 3PSP is a small, portable user-friendly device which will allow broader access to Inovio's vaccines and immunotherapies, whether the vaccine is administered to our troops ready to be deployed around the world, at a local pharmacy or in challenging settings such as rural Africa."
In recent Inovio sponsored clinical studies, intradermal delivery of Inovio's HIV, Ebola, and Zika vaccines resulted in consistently high and robust levels of immune responses. In an HIV vaccine study using intradermal delivery of PENNVAX® vaccine, Inovio demonstrated nearly 100% of participants displayed anti-HIV antibody and CD4+ T cell responses.
The project was sponsored by the U.S. Government through Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) number W15QKN-16-9-1002 between the Medical CBRN Defense Consortium (MCDC), and the Government. The MCDC that is funding Inovio's device development, was formed in response to the U.S. government's interest in leveraging cutting edge R&D from commercial sources. This gives MCDC an agile and flexible way to develop medical countermeasures using new and innovative technology. Specifically, this program supports the U.S. Department of Defense's future medical pharmaceutical and diagnostic requirements as related to enhancing the mission effectiveness of military personnel.
About Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Inovio is an innovative biotechnology company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of its synthetic nucleic technology targeted against cancers and infectious diseases. Inovio's proprietary technology platform applies antigen sequencing and delivery to activate potent immune responses to targeted diseases. The technology functions exclusively in vivo, and has been demonstrated to consistently activate robust and fully functional T cell and antibody responses against targeted cancers and pathogens. Inovio's most advanced clinical program, VGX-3100, is in Phase 3 for the treatment of HPV-related cervical pre-cancer. Also in development are Phase 2 immuno-oncology programs targeting HPV-related cancers, bladder cancer, and glioblastoma, as well as platform development programs in hepatitis B, Zika, Ebola, MERS, and HIV. Partners and collaborators include AstraZeneca, Regeneron, Roche/Genentech, ApolloBio Corporation, GeneOne Life Science, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Cancer Institute, HIV Vaccines Trial Network, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, The Wistar Institute, and the University of Pennsylvania. For more information, visit www.inovio.com.
This press release contains certain forward-looking statements relating to our business, including our plans to develop DNA-based immunotherapies, our expectations regarding our research and development programs, including the planned initiation and conduct of clinical trials and the availability and timing of data from those trials. Actual events or results may differ from the expectations set forth herein as a result of a number of factors, including uncertainties inherent in pre-clinical studies, clinical trials and product development programs, the availability of funding to support continuing research and studies in an effort to prove safety and efficacy of electroporation technology as a delivery mechanism or develop viable DNA immunotherapies, our ability to support our pipeline of SynCon® active immunotherapy and vaccine products, the ability of our collaborators to attain development and commercial milestones for products we license and product sales that will enable us to receive future payments and royalties, the adequacy of our capital resources, the availability or potential availability of alternative therapies or treatments for the conditions targeted by us or our collaborators, including alternatives that may be more efficacious or cost effective than any therapy or treatment that we and our collaborators hope to develop, issues involving product liability, issues involving patents and whether they or licenses to them will provide us with meaningful protection from others using the covered technologies, whether such proprietary rights are enforceable or defensible or infringe or allegedly infringe on rights of others or can withstand claims of invalidity and whether we can finance or devote other significant resources that may be necessary to prosecute, protect or defend them, the level of corporate expenditures, assessments of our technology by potential corporate or other partners or collaborators, capital market conditions, the impact of government healthcare proposals and other factors set forth in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018, our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2019 and other filings we make from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. There can be no assurance that any product candidate in our pipeline will be successfully developed, manufactured or commercialized, that final results of clinical trials will be supportive of regulatory approvals required to market products, or that any of the forward-looking information provided herein will be proven accurate. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise these statements, except as may be required by law.
CONTACTS:
Investors: Ben Matone, Inovio, 484-362-0076, ben.matone@inovio.com
Media: Jeff Richardson, Inovio, 267-440-4211, jrichardson@inovio.com