Inovio, CEPI Enter Partnership

Inovio Pharmaceuticals and CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) have entered a partnership under which Inovio will develop vaccine candidates against Lassa fever and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

CEPI will fund up to $56,000,000 to support Inovio’s pre-clinical and clinical advancement through Phase 2 of INO-4500, its Lassa fever vaccine, and INO-4700, its MERS vaccine. The shared goal of Inovio and CEPI is for the Lassa and MERS vaccines to be available as soon as possible for emergency use.

This is the second company agreement CEPI has signed since its launch in 2017. The agreement will enable funding for Inovio’s development efforts over a five-year period. The partnership agreement also includes options, not counted in the total above, to establish investigational stockpiles of both vaccines.

Lassa fever is a disease endemic to West Africa associated with annual outbreaks. An ongoing outbreak in Nigeria has, according to figures from the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control, resulted in over 400 confirmed cases and over 100 deaths from January 1, 2018 through April 8, 2018. MERS, first identified in 2012, causes a severe respiratory illness and has been associated with a number of outbreaks in Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries.

Richard Hatchett, chief executive officer of CEPI, said, “Epidemics don’t respect borders; they destroy lives and devastate economies and we need to move swiftly to prepare for them. Partnering with Inovio is a considerable move forward for CEPI’s vaccine portfolio and developing a global insurance policy against these diseases.”

CEPI’s funding will support development up to the end of Phase 2, providing clinical safety and immunological data, and the establishment of investigational stockpiles that will be ready for clinical efficacy trial testing during outbreaks.

Dr. J. Joseph Kim, Inovio’s president & chief executive officer, said, “The Inovio/CEPI partnership demonstrates the confidence of both organizations in Inovio’s DNA vaccine platform to rapidly produce countermeasures against emerging viral threats potentially protecting large populations from a pandemic.  A key demonstration of such capabilities was that Inovio was the first organization to develop, manufacture and report positive human data from a Zika vaccine in less than seven months – when traditional vaccines take several years to reach this point. We look forward to addressing the global health challenges of emerging infectious diseases.”

Inovio will develop these DNA vaccines employing its ASPIRE™ (Antigen SPecific Immune REsponses) platform. This platform delivers optimized synthetic antigenic genes into cells, where they are translated into protein antigens that activate an individual’s immune system to generate robust targeted T cell and antibody responses. Inovio’s immunotherapies function exclusively in vivo, and have generated an antigen-specific immune response against targeted diseases in all clinical trials to date.