Inovio rises on encouraging early COVID-19 vaccine data

Shares of USA-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: INO) gained 22.8% in pre-market trading on Wednesday, and were still up 8.4% at $15.79 by close, after the company released encouraging early data on its coronavirus vaccine candidate.

The company announced the publication in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications of the pre-clinical study data for IN0-4800, its COVID-19 DNA vaccine, demonstrating robust neutralizing antibody and T cell immune responses against coronavirus SARS-CoV-2., by Inovio scientists and collaborators from The Wistar Institute, the University of Texas, Public Health England, Fudan University, and Advaccine.

Dr Kate Broderick, Inovio’s senior vice president of R&D and team lead for COVID-19 vaccine development, said: "These positive preclinical results from our COVID-19 DNA vaccine (INO-4800) not only highlight the potency of our DNA medicines platform, but also build on our previously reported positive Phase I/IIa data from our vaccine against the coronavirus that causes MERS, which demonstrated near-100% seroconversion and neutralization from a similarly designed vaccine INO-4700. The potent neutralizing antibody and T cell immune responses generated in multiple animal models are supportive of our currently on-going INO-4800 clinical trials."