Today Inovio Pharmaceuticals (INO) announced that it has dosed its first patients using its Universal Vaccine known as PENNVAX-GP. This trial will be a phase 1 trial to assess the safety and tolerability of the vaccine in these patients with HIV. This study is being conducted by the HIV Vaccine Trials Network — HTVN.
The trial will measure the types of immune responses that are inhibited using the PENNVAX-GP vaccine. Four groups of healthy patients will ether receive the PENNVAX-GP with an immune booster IL-12 or without an immune booster. This is so the company can compare the efficacy with and without the immune booster.
As mentioned above, the trial is being funded by the HTVN but the study is being funded by the National Institute Of Allergy and Infectious Diseases– NIAID — part of the National Institute Of Health. Recently Invoio’s PENNVAX-GP vaccine development has been funded through a $25 million NIAID contract which was awarded to Inovio and its collaborators.
In addition to the previous funding, Inovio was also recently awarded a five-year $16 million grant for pre-clinical/clinical development for an AIDS vaccine, also from the NIAID. Previous results from the PENNVAX Phase 1 trial demonstrated that 89%, or 24 out of 27 patients, developed robust CD4 and CD8 Immune responses. That means that these patients’ bodies developed antibodies that could potentially resist the disease. These results were published back in 2013 in the Journal Of Infectious Diseases.
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