What is Inovio?
The pharmaceutical company received a $71M grant from the Department of Defense for coronavirus vaccine testing
Inovio Pharmaceuticals is a Pennsylvania-based biotech company that's on the cutting edge of the search for a coronavirus vaccine.
The company received a $71 million grant from the Department of Defense on June 23 to scale up its Cellectra intradermal DNA vaccine delivery device.
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"The current DoD contract further supports INOVIO's large-scale production of devices and arrays to deliver potentially hundreds of millions of doses of INO-4800 next year to combat the global COVID-19 pandemic," Dr. J. Joseph Kim, Inovio's president and CEO, said in a statement.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| INO | INOVIO PHARMACEUTICALS | 4.35 | +0.03 | +0.69% |
Inovio already received $10 million from billionaire Bill Gates' Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations to accelerate testing of the device.
Earlier in the year, Inovio said it created a coronavirus vaccine hours after getting access to the genetic sequence in mid-January.
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Neal Browning receives a shot in the first-stage safety study clinical trial of a potential vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, Monday, March 16, 2020, at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seat
"We were able to rapidly construct our vaccine in a matter of about three hours once we had the DNA sequence from the virus available because of the power of our DNA medicine platform," Dr. J. Joseph Kim, Inovio's president and CEO, told FOX Business in February.
A laboratory technician places various blood vial samples into a rack that is sitting on a desk, for later testing. Medical gloves and a lab coat are worn for protection.
With help from CEPI, Inovio is testing the vaccine in South Korea.
The company was founded in 1979 and focuses on finding DNA medicines for cancer, Ebola, AIDS and other diseases, according to Yahoo Finance.