Inovio Reports Encouraging Results From Preclinical Testing Of Zika Virus Vaccine

Shares of Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ: INO) were trading higher by more than 5 percent on Wednesday after the company announced that preclinical testing of SynCon, a vaccine for the Zika virus, induced "robust and durable immune responses."

Inovio is developing a vaccine for the Zika virus with South Korea-based GeneOne Life Sciences and academic collaborators.

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Inovio Pharmaceuticals noted that in its pre-clinical study, "DNA vaccine constructs targeting multiple Zika virus antigens were synthetically generated using Inovio's SynCon vaccine technology. These SynCon constructs were administered using Inovio's CELLECTRA® electroporation delivery technology. Inovio's Zika DNA vaccine resulted in seroconversion, or the development of detectable specific antibodies in the blood, in all vaccinated mice."

Dr. J. Joseph Kim, Inovio's President and CEO, said, "Using our SynCon® technology we rapidly generated a synthetic vaccine candidate that shows promise as a preventive and treatment. With robust antibody and killer T cell responses generated by our vaccine in mice, we will next test the vaccine in non-human primates and initiate clinical product manufacturing. We plan to initiate phase I human testing of our Zika vaccine before the end of 2016."