INO-4800 was going to be developed as a COVID-19 heterologous booster vaccine, but INOVIO, a biotechnology company specialising in the development and commercialization of DNA medicines to help treat and prevent infectious diseases, cancer, and diseases linked to HPV, has announced today that it has stopped doing so. The choice was made in response to INOVIO’s thorough analysis of its portfolio, the state of the market, and the demand for COVID-19 vaccines around the world.
“We continue to believe that our DNA medicine technology has attributes that could be beneficial to a heterologous COVID-19 booster vaccine. However, our assessment of the current global demand for COVID-19 vaccines, changes in regulatory timelines and requirements, diminishing government financial support, and the overall growing uncertainty related to opportunities for heterologous booster vaccines have resulted in our decision to discontinue internal funding efforts to develop INO-4800 as a heterologous booster vaccine. As we work to bring DNA medicines to the marketplace, we will reallocate resources and focus our efforts on other product candidates in our pipeline, such as INO-3107 and INO-5401, both of which recently reported positive Phase 1/2 data for their respective targeted indications in recurrent respiratory papillomatosis and glioblastoma. We continue to expect to be able to report updates in the coming months from our other ongoing trials targeting Cervical High-Grade Squamous Intraepithelial Lesions (REVEAL 2), Ebola, Lassa fever and MERS.”
Dr. Jacqueline Shea, INOVIO’s CEO and President
About INO-4800 and Ongoing COVID-19 Studies
As a COVID-19 vaccination candidate, INO-4800, a DNA pharmaceutical product candidate, has being researched. It is still being studied by the World Health Organization as a part of their Solidarity Trial Vaccines, an international, multi-center, multi-vaccine, adaptive, shared placebo, event-driven, individually randomised controlled clinical trial that aims to assess the efficacy and safety of promising new COVID-19 vaccines.
INO-4800, a COVID-19 heterologous booster vaccine, is still being developed by INOVIO’s Chinese partner, Advaccine, with its own funds. The data from Advaccine’s heterologous boost trial with INO-4800 are now being analysed. Advaccine will give any upcoming updates on this experiment.
Based on its DNA therapeutics technology, INOVIO intends to continue its preclinical research into the possibility for a pan-COVID-19 vaccine candidate. This development effort will be guided by the knowledge gained from earlier investigations with DNA medicine product candidates, particularly those for INO-4800.
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