Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:INO) saw its shares jump on new developments.
The company, based in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., disclosed that the United States Food and Drug Administration accepted the New Drug Application for INO-4800, a vaccine that is designed to prevent COVID-19, clearing the way for Phase 1 clinical testing in healthy volunteers.
The company claimed it had created a potential vaccine for the rapidly spreading coronavirus on Jan. 10, just three hours after Chinese researchers publicly released the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 the virus that causes the illness. Now, it's starting human clinical trials for that potential vaccine, INO-4800.
The trial will involve up to 40 healthy adult volunteers, each of whom will receive two doses of INO-4800 four weeks apart.
The goals of the phase 1 trial are to test the vaccine's safety and its immunogenicity --i.e., its ability to trigger an immune response in the body. Inovio expects initial data from this trial by late summer, and plans to move on to phase 2 clinical trials -- which will test INO-4800's efficacy -- as soon as possible
Other companies are also making headway in their efforts to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. For instance, pharma giant Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) recently announced that it would initiate human clinical trials for its investigational COVID-19 vaccine by September.
Shares in INO leaped 54 cents, or 6.4%, to $8.98
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