Technology Overview
Which technology has provided the greatest clinical benefit in the history of modern medicine?
"Vaccines are among the greatest achievements of biomedical science and public health, stimulating protective immune responses against acute and chronic infectious diseases, as well as some infectious diseases that result in cancer.
"For immunizations developed prior to 1980, there was a 92% reduction in eight vaccine-preventable illnesses and a 99% or greater decline in deaths due to vaccine-preventable diseases.
"Continued efforts to improve the efficacy and safety of vaccines and vaccine coverage among all age groups will provide overall public health benefit. The challenges in vaccine development, vaccine financing, surveillance, assessment, and vaccine delivery are opportunities for the future."
Historical Comparisons of Morbidity and Mortality for Vaccine-Preventable Diseases in the United States
Journal of the American Medical Association
November, 2007
The next generation of vaccines
Vaccines have been critical for mitigating disease and significantly expanding life-span. Yet there is a critical unmet need to develop newer vaccine modalities to target hard-to-treat diseases and emerging pathogens, as well as make vaccines faster and easier to produce and more affordable to the global population.
A new generation of vaccine, called DNA vaccines, displays the potential to meet these goals. There is promising evidence that delivering this next generation of vaccines using technology based on the science of electroporation may provide a unique path to safely and effectively address an array of diseases.
DNA vaccines have the potential to provide the following important attributes:
- Accelerated development times
- Easy, cost effective manufacturing using well established methods
- No ability to reproduce and spread disease
- Broad, powerful immune response, stimulating not only antibody production, as do today's vaccines, but also T-cells, which are required to kill cancerous cells or cells infected by chronic infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C virus
- Preventive AND therapeutic capabilities.
DNA vaccines consist of three primary components, all of which provide challenges and opportunities for development breakthroughs:
- Vaccine. A fragment of DNA designed to produce an antigenic protein related to a particular disease is injected into the body. If sufficient quantity of the DNA can be inserted into cells, the cells will produce the antigenic protein and may trigger the desired antibody and T-cell immune response. As a therapeutic vaccine, the aim is to induce the immune system to kill existing cells infected with the associated infectious disease or to kill cancerous cells. As a preventive vaccine, the aim is to have the immune system retain memory of the antigen to provide future protection against the disease. The challenge and opportunity is to refine immune system targets of the vaccine to elicit a clinically relevant immune response.
- Delivery method. Scientists have been experimenting with different approaches to deliver DNA vaccines into cells of the body in order to produce the intended antigenic proteins. Advancement of the field has been hindered by the lack of a safe, efficient, and cost effective DNA delivery method. The challenge and opportunity is to refine a delivery method capable of enabling the desired immune response without inducing an unwanted immune response against the vaccine or the delivery method itself, and without producing other toxicity.
- Adjuvants. Many protein antigens are poorly recognized by the immune system without the addition of compounds that can help set up an environment for such recognition. Adjuvants typically create a "danger signal" to the immune system, helping the body distinguish those targets to which antibodies and T-cells should be directed.
Inovio's unique expertise, technology and patents are well-positioned to achieve potential breakthroughs in the development of new vaccines.
Inovio Biomedical: a vaccine development leader
Inovio Biomedical's management and scientists together possess many decades of broad vaccine and, specifically, DNA vaccine expertise. Their individual and collaborative efforts have contributed significantly to expanding the boundaries of vaccine science. Inovio is a leader in electroporation-delivered DNA vaccines and possesses unique development expertise and proprietary technology and patents in the areas of DNA vaccine design, formulation, and delivery, with related manufacturing expertise as well.
The company's novel SynCon™ DNA vaccine construct technology enables the development of DNA vaccines better able to address 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 a broad pipeline of proprietary preclinical and clinical-stage DNA vaccines.
The company's proprietary electroporation-based DNA delivery technology has shown promise to enhance the potency of preventive and therapeutic vaccines against cancers and chronic infectious diseases.
Current partners using the company's electroporation delivery technology include vaccine giant Merck; biotech companies; as well as government and non-government agencies such as the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, National Cancer Institute, and International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.
Inovio and/or its partners are developing vaccine candidates against multiple diseases with unmet needs:
- Cancer vaccines: breast, colorectal, ovarian, lung, prostate, melanoma, cervical (HPV)
- Infectious disease vaccines: HIV, hepatitis C, influenza, bioterrorism targets.
Next section: Vaccine history & progress
Inovio's DNA vaccine technology