Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:INO) today announced the Coalition for 
Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) has awarded Inovio a grant of up to $9 
million to develop a vaccine against the recently emerged strain of coronavirus 
(2019-nCoV). This initial CEPI funding will support Inovio's preclinical and 
clinical development through Phase 1 human testing of INO-4800, its new 
coronavirus vaccine matched to the outbreak strain. CEPI previously awarded 
Inovio a grant of up to $56 million for the development of vaccines against 
Lassa fever and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), also caused by a 
coronavirus.

Inovio's participation in this developing effort is based on the ideal 
suitability of its DNA medicine platform to rapidly develop a vaccine against 
an emerging virus with pandemic potential, proven vaccine development 
capabilities and a strong track record of rapidly generating promising 
countermeasures against previous pandemic threats. Inovio was the first to 
advance its vaccine (INO-4700) against MERS-CoV, a related coronavirus, into 
evaluation in humans. Inovio is currently preparing to initiate a Phase 2 
vaccine trial for INO-4700 in the Middle East where most MERS viral outbreaks 
have occurred.

In a recently published paper in Lancet Infectious Diseases, Inovio's Phase 1 
study of its MERS-CoV vaccine demonstrated it was well tolerated and 
furthermore induced high levels of antibody responses in roughly 95% of 
subjects, while also generating broad-based T cell responses in nearly 90% of 
study participants. Durable antibody responses to INO-4700 were also maintained 
through 60 weeks following dosing.

Richard Hatchett, CEPI's CEO, said, "Given the rapid global spread of the 
2019-nCoV virus the world needs to act quickly and in unity to tackle this 
disease. Our intention with this work is to leverage our work with Inovio on 
the MERS coronavirus and rapid response platform to speed up vaccine 
development."

Dr. J. Joseph Kim, Inovio's President & CEO said, "We're extremely honored to 
expand our partnership with CEPI to tackle this new threat to global public 
health. Our DNA medicine platform represents the best modern day approach to 
combatting emerging pandemics. We have already demonstrated positive clinical 
outcomes with our vaccine against MERS-CoV, another coronavirus. Importantly, 
following the Zika viral infection outbreak, Inovio and our partners developed 
a vaccine that went from bench to human testing in just seven months – the 
fastest vaccine development on record in recent decades. We believe we can 
further improve upon this accelerated timeline to meet the current challenge of 
the emerging coronavirus 2019-nCoV."

Inovio's collaborators in this coronavirus vaccine development include the 
Wistar Institute, VGXI, a fully owned subsidiary of GeneOne Life Science (KSE: 
011000), and Twist Bioscience (NASDAQ: TWST).

About CEPI

CEPI is an innovative partnership between public, private, philanthropic, and 
civil organisations launched in Davos in 2017 to develop vaccines to stop 
future epidemics. CEPI has received multi-year funding from Norway, Germany, 
Japan, Canada, Australia, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and 
Wellcome. CEPI has also received single-year investments from the government of 
Belgium and the United Kingdom. The European Commission forsees substantial 
financial contributions to support relevant projects through EC mechanisms. 
CEPI has reached over US$ 750 million of its $1 billion funding target. Since 
its launch in January 2017, CEPI has announced three calls for proposals. The 
first call was for candidate vaccines against Lassa virus, Middle East 
Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), and Nipah virus. The second call 
was for the development of platforms that can be used for rapid vaccine 
development against unknown pathogens. The third call is for candidate vaccines 
against Rift Valley fever and Chikungunya viruses. To date, CEPI has committed 
to investing over $310 million in 12 vaccine candidates (five against Lassa 
virus, four against MERS-CoV, three against Nipah virus) and two vaccine 
platforms to develop vaccines against Disease X.

About Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Inovio is a biotechnology company focused on rapidly bringing to market 
precisely designed DNA medicines to treat, cure and/or protect people from 
diseases associated with HPV, cancer, and infectious diseases. Inovio is the 
first and only company to have clinically demonstrated that a DNA medicine can 
be delivered directly into cells in the body via a proprietary smart device to 
safely produce a robust immune response to destroy and clear high-risk HPV 16 
and 18, which are responsible for 70% of cervical cancer, 90% of anal cancer 
and 69% of vulvar cancer. In addition to HPV, Inovio's optimized plasmid design 
and delivery technology has been demonstrated to consistently activate robust 
and fully functional T cell and antibody responses against targeted cancers and 
pathogens. Inovio's most advanced clinical program, VGX-3100, is in Phase 3 
development for the treatment of HPV-related cervical pre-cancer. Also in 
development are Phase 2 immuno-oncology programs targeting HPV-related cancers 
and GBM, as well as externally funded platform development programs in Zika, 
MERS, Lassa, and HIV. Partners and collaborators include ApolloBio Corporation, 
AstraZeneca, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Coalition for Epidemic 
Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, 
GeneOne Life Science, HIV Vaccines Trial Network, Medical CBRN Defense 
Consortium (MCDC), National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, 
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Regeneron, 
Roche/Genentech, University of Pennsylvania, Walter Reed Army Institute of 
Research, and The Wistar Institute. For more information, visit www.inovio.com.

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements relating to our 
business, including our plans to develop DNA medicines, our expectations 
regarding our research and development programs, as well as commercialization 
activities, including the planned initiation and conduct of clinical trials, 
the availability and timing of data from those trials and our commercialization 
strategy and tactics. Actual events or results may differ from the expectations 
set forth herein as a result of a number of factors, including uncertainties 
inherent in pre-clinical studies, clinical trials, product development programs 
and commercialization activities and outcomes, the availability of funding to 
support continuing research and studies in an effort to prove safety and 
efficacy of electroporation technology as a delivery mechanism or develop 
viable DNA vaccines, our ability to support our pipeline of SynCon(R) active 
immunotherapy and vaccine products, the ability of our collaborators to attain 
development and commercial milestones for products we license and product sales 
that will enable us to receive future payments and royalties, the adequacy of 
our capital resources, the availability or potential availability of 
alternative therapies or treatments for the conditions targeted by us or our 
collaborators, including alternatives that may be more efficacious or cost 
effective than any therapy or treatment that we and our collaborators hope to 
develop, issues involving product liability, issues involving patents and 
whether they or licenses to them will provide us with meaningful protection 
from others using the covered technologies, whether such proprietary rights are 
enforceable or defensible or infringe or allegedly infringe on rights of others 
or can withstand claims of invalidity and whether we can finance or devote 
other significant resources that may be necessary to prosecute, protect or 
defend them, the level of corporate expenditures, assessments of our technology 
by potential corporate or other partners or collaborators, capital market 
conditions, the impact of government healthcare proposals and other factors set 
forth in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018, 
our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2019, and 
other filings we make from time to time with the Securities and Exchange 
Commission. There can be no assurance that any product candidate in our 
pipeline will be successfully developed, manufactured or commercialized, that 
final results of clinical trials will be supportive of regulatory approvals 
required to market products, or that any of the forward-looking information 
provided herein will be proven accurate. Forward-looking statements speak only 
as of the date of this release, and we undertake no obligation to update or 
revise these statements, except as may be required by law.

CONTACTS: 
Investors:  Ben Matone, 484-362-0076, ben.matone@inovio.com
Media:      Jeff Richardson, 267-440-4211, jrichardson@inovio.com

SOURCE Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc.