Inovio Signs Agreements with National Cancer Institute and International AIDS Vaccine Initiative

Inovio Biomedical Corporation has announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Genetronics, Inc., has entered into separate collaboration agreements with two internationally recognized research organizations, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), to evaluate Inovio’s electroporation technology for the delivery of DNA vaccines.

Inovio’s DNA delivery systems are designed with the aim of enhancing the potency of DNA-based immunotherapies and vaccines against infectious diseases and cancers.

The collaboration with the NCI is being conducted under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) and will assess novel HIV constructs in non-human primates, cytokine genes as vaccine adjuvants (immune system stimulants), and possibly anticancer therapies delivered using Inovio’s electroporation-mediated DNA delivery technology. The work will be performed in collaboration with Drs. George Pavlakis and Barbara Felber of the NCI’s Frederick, MD, facility.

Inovio’s collaboration with IAVI will focus on optimizing HIV vaccine design. Experimental HIV vaccines will be screened in preclinical models to select the most efficacious design to advance to clinical testing. The work will be conducted at IAVI’s AIDS Vaccine Development Laboratory in Brooklyn, NY, using Inovio’s proprietary technology.

Avtar Dhillon, MD, Inovio’s CEO, stated, “Inovio continues to expand its partnerships with leading corporate, academic and governmental organizations interested in developing gene-based vaccines. We are encouraged that renowned medical organizations like the NCI and IAVI have recognized the potentially enabling capabilities of our DNA delivery technology and chosen to collaborate with us in these medically significant disease areas.”