Inovio Pharmaceuticals will partner with GeneOne Life Science to advance its DNA vaccine for MERS into a phase I clinical trial.
Inovio and GeneOne will conduct a phase I trial to evaluate the safety, tolerability and immunogenicity of Inovio’s DNA-based MERS vaccine. The companies are currently conducting pre-IND activities and plan to start the clinical study before year end.
In preclinical tests, INO-4500 showed robust and durable immune responses. Animals vaccinated with INO-4500 generated strong neutralizing antibodies and robust CD8+ T cells to MERS antigens. These findings are vital given the importance of neutralizing antibodies in preventing infection and the role T cells play in clearing infection by killing cells that harbor the virus.
