Overview
A message from Inovio's CEO
At Inovio, we are seeking to help patients by improving their quality of life through innovative research. Our vision is to address cancers and chronic infectious diseases with a new generation of safe and effective vaccines for preventive and therapeutic purposes.
DNA-based vaccines potentially represent a multi-billion-dollar business opportunity. We believe that Inovio's strong intellectual property and proprietary technology relating to electroporation-based DNA vaccines enables us to play a leadership role in advancing the development and potential commercialization of this important new generation of immunotherapies.
Thank you for your interest in Inovio Pharmaceuticals.
J. Joseph Kim, Ph.D.
President & CEO
Leadership in the development of next-generation vaccines
Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE AMEX: INO) is focused on the discovery, development, and delivery of a new generation of vaccines, called DNA vaccines, to prevent or treat cancers and chronic infectious diseases. This next generation of immunotherapies could potentially protect millions of people from debilitation or death from diseases without adequate treatments.
DNA vaccines have great potential, but two broad challenges must be overcome to achieve development success. First, scientists must further refine immune system targets in order to design DNA vaccines able to induce clinically relevant immune responses. Second, they must improve DNA delivery capabilities to overcome safety and efficacy limitations common to most existing delivery technologies. Inovio's intellectual property, comprised of the knowledge and expertise of its people, its vaccine design and development processes as well as DNA delivery devices, and its patents, positions the company to potentially overcome these challenges and achieve new clinical breakthroughs.
With respect to designing better vaccines, Inovio's management and scientists possess decades of experience in R&D and clinical development of immunotherapies. For example, Dr. David Weiner, a University of Pennsylvania professor and Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board, is considered a pioneer in the DNA vaccine field. The company's management team has worked with big pharmaceutical companies and has been instrumental in taking multiple drugs and vaccines through clinic trials to commercialization. The company's vaccines are intended to generate the T-cell responses considered vital to fighting cancers and chronic infectious diseases. Its novel SynCon™ DNA vaccine construct technology, employing genomic engineering, enables the design of DNA vaccines intended to fight changing strains of diseases such as HIV, HCV, HPV, and influenza. Inovio's R&D team has been able to repeatedly translate candidate vaccines from "bench to IND filing" within one year.
Inovio has achieved compelling preclinical data for multiple DNA vaccine candidates, launched human studies for proprietary DNA vaccines, and has additional candidates ready to enter clinical studies. As an example of external validation of Inovio's technology platform, last fall the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded the company a $23.5 million grant to advance its research for a DNA vaccine against HIV.
With respect to DNA delivery, Inovio's dominant patent estate and technology platform comprise decades of expertise and investment in electroporation-based DNA delivery. Electroporation uses brief, controlled electrical pulses to create temporary pores in cell membranes and enable dramatically increased cellular uptake of a useful biopharmaceutical. Once the DNA vaccine enters a cell, it can then "express" the proteins it was encoded to produce. These antigenic proteins are designed to be uniquely associated with a targeted cancer or infectious disease, and may then stimulate a more powerful immune response to fight existing disease or provide future protection against the targeted disease.
Companies such as Merck have entered into license agreements with Inovio after extensive due diligence. Inovio has ongoing collaborations and clinical studies focused on DNA vaccine development with many respected government, academic and commercial organizations. Interim human data have provided encouraging results showing that DNA-based immunotherapies delivered using electroporation safely induce heightened immune and clinical responses.
Inovio and its partners are targeting diseases with significant unmet treatment needs, including cancers and chronic infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C virus. Inovio's development strategy consists of two key components:
- Proprietary Vaccine Development. Inovio has a robust pipeline of preclinical and clinical-stage electroporation-based DNA vaccines. The company intends to develop individual products through to early clinical validation and out-license these products to complete clinical development and commercialization.
- Electroporation Technology Licensing. Inovio licenses its proprietary electroporation DNA delivery systems for partners and collaborators to use in conjunction with DNA-based immunotherapies. Inovio's industry-leading list of partner and collaborators includes respected organizations such as Merck, University of Southampton, and the HIV Vaccine Trials Initiative.
Inovio milestones
- 1996: First data in small animals using electroporation and gene therapy
- 2004: First industry license agreement of electroporation technology with a Big Pharma (Merck) relating to a DNA vaccine
- 2004: First-in-man clinical study using a DNA-based immunotherapy delivered with electroporation (with partner, Moffitt Cancer Center)
- 2007: First human data from a DNA-based immunotherapy delivered using electroporation (with partner, Moffitt Cancer Center)
- 2008: First DNA-based product delivered using electroporation approved for use in an animal (growth hormone replacement hormone (GHRH) for swine).
Inovio Pharmaceuticals will continue to apply its resources to extend the boundaries of vaccination, with the aim to advance its electroporation-based DNA vaccines to provide new preventive and therapeutic benefits to patients with cancers and chronic infections.