Country for PR: United States
Contributor: PR Newswire New York
Tuesday, March 24 2020 - 23:00
AsiaNet
Ology Bioservices, Inovio Partner To Manufacture COVID-19 DNA Vaccine With $11.9 Million Department of Defense Grant
PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pennsylvania and ALACHUA, Florida, March 24, 2020 /PRNewswire-AsiaNet/ -

Ology Bioservices Inc., a biologics contract development and manufacturing 
organization (CDMO), and Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc., (NASDAQ: INO) developing 
DNA medicines for infectious diseases and cancer, announced today that the 
Department of Defense (DOD) has awarded Ology Bioservices with a contract 
valued at $11.9 million to work with Inovio on DNA technology transfer to 
rapidly manufacture DNA vaccines. This work is supported by the Office of the 
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs with funding from the Defense 
Health Agency.

Under this program, Ology Bioservices will work with Inovio Pharmaceuticals to 
manufacture Inovio's DNA vaccine (INO-4800) for prevention of infection with 
the COVID-19 virus. The aim of the program is to rapidly and efficiently 
deliver the vaccine to the Department of Defense for upcoming clinical trials.

Peter H. Khoury, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Ology 
Bioservices, noted "We are excited to be working with the Department of Defense 
and Inovio to rapidly respond to this crisis. The Advanced Development and 
Manufacturing Facility operated by Ology Bioservices was designed to respond to 
just such emergencies as we are now experiencing, and we are proud to be part 
of this effort to protect the U.S. warfighter and the nation."

J. Joseph Kim, Ph.D., Inovio's President and CEO, said, "Along with advancing 
INO-4800 through clinical studies as rapidly as possible, Inovio's goal is to 
scale up the manufacturing of this vaccine for future studies and for potential 
emergency use, if appropriate. Powered by the U.S. Department of Defense 
support, Inovio is pleased to partner with Ology to enable rapid response 
manufacture of INO-4800 especially for the nation's warfighters and other 
military personnel. This DOD-funded partnership is a testament to the 
importance and strength of public-private partnerships in meeting the 
challenges the world faces with the COVID-19 outbreak. This partnership 
increases Inovio's manufacturing capabilities for our COVID vaccine and 
establishes an additional DNA vaccine manufacturing facility to protect the 
U.S. military against current and future disease outbreaks." 

"Given the current global health crisis, prophylaxis/vaccine development is 
critical to defend against the coronavirus disease 2019," said Douglas Bryce, 
Joint Program Executive Officer for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and 
Nuclear Defense.  "We need several approaches to ensure we have a quick 
solution, and the medical countermeasures Advanced Development and 
Manufacturing Facility is poised to contribute to the race for a vaccine in 
coordination with our interagency partners like Health and Human Services, 
along with our partners in industry and academia."

Matthew Hepburn, M.D., Joint Project Lead CBRN Defense Enabling 
Biotechnologies, stated, "We are sincerely optimistic about the partnership 
between Inovio and Ology Bioservices, in order to make doses of a vaccine that 
could potentially protect our military personnel. It is urgently needed."

About Ology Bioservices Inc. 
Ology Bioservices is a privately held, full-service Contract Development 
Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) serving both government and commercial 
clients, specializing in biologic drug substance manufacturing, from early 
stage through commercial product. The company has 183,000 square feet of 
manufacturing, process development and QA/QC space in its state-of-the-art, 
Department of Defense Advanced Development and Manufacturing Facility in 
Florida. The company's infrastructure provides unique services to its clients, 
including full regulatory support from preclinical through licensure, clinical 
trial operational support and bioanalytical testing, as well as CGMP 
manufacturing up to Biosafety Level 3 (BSL3). Ology Bioservices has more than 
20 years' experience developing and manufacturing drugs and biologics for the 
U.S. Government, with nearly $1B in government contracts awarded to date. The 
team at Ology Bioservices has decades of experience manufacturing, developing 
and licensing vaccines and protein/antibody therapeutics. For more information, 
visit the company's website at www.ologybio.com.

About Inovio Pharmaceuticals 
Inovio is a biotechnology company focused on rapidly bringing to market 
precisely designed DNA medicines to treat, cure, and 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 
produce a robust and tolerable immune response. Specifically, Inovio's lead 
candidate VGX-3100, currently in Phase 3 trials for precancerous cervical 
dysplasia, demonstrated it destroyed and cleared high-risk HPV 16 and 18 in a 
Phase 2b clinical trial. High-risk HPV is responsible for 70% of cervical 
cancer, 90% of anal cancer, and 69% of vulvar cancer. Also in development are 
programs targeting HPV-related cancers and a rare HPV-related disease: 
recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (RRP); non-HPV-related cancers 
glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) and prostate cancer; as well as externally funded 
infectious disease DNA vaccine development programs in Zika, Lassa fever, 
Ebola, HIV, and coronaviruses MERS and COVID-19. Partners and collaborators 
include Advaccine, 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, Plumbline Life Sciences, Regeneron, Roche/Genentech, University of 
Pennsylvania, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and The Wistar Institute. 
Inovio also is a proud recipient of 2020 Women on Boards "W" designation 
recognizing companies with more than 20% women on their board of directors. For 
more information, visit www.inovio.com.

About the JPEO-CBRND 
The Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and 
Nuclear Defense is the Joint Service's lead for development, acquisition, 
fielding and life-cycle support of chemical, biological, radiological and 
nuclear defense equipment and medical countermeasures. As an effective 
acquisition program, we put capable and supportable systems in the hands of the 
service members and first responders, when and where it is needed, at an 
affordable price. Our vision is a resilient Joint Force enabled to fight and 
win unencumbered by a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear 
environment; championed by innovative and state-of-the-art solutions. JPEO 
Enabling Biotechnologies (EB) is an organization established for the purpose of 
providing medical solutions, during a crisis, against future threats.

[The information contained in this press release does not necessarily reflect 
the position or the policy of the U.S. government and no official endorsement 
should be inferred.]

CONTACTS

Inovio Pharmaceuticals 
Media: Jeff Richardson,  
267-440-4211, jrichardson@inovio.com

Investors: Ben Matone,  
484-362-0076, ben.matone@inovio.com

Ology Bioservices Inc. 
Robert V. House, Ph.D. 
Senior VP, Government Contracts 
301-276-7851 
robert.house@ologybio.com  
or 
Rx Communications Group, LLC 
Melody A. Carey, 917-322-2571 
President and Chief Executive Officer 
mcarey@rxir.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, including the planned 
initiation and conduct of clinical trials, and the availability and timing of 
data from those trials. 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 medicines, our ability to support our pipeline 
of DNA medicine 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, 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. 

SOURCE: INOVIO Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
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