Inovio Pharmaceutical's DNA Vaccine for Zika Virus Induces Robust Immune Responses in Preclinical Study

Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:INO) announced that preclinical testing of its synthetic vaccine for the Zika virus induced robust and durable immune responses, demonstrating the potential for a SynCon^® vaccine to prevent and treat infections from this harmful pathogen.
According to the press release:

Health authorities have observed neurological and autoimmune complications potentially associated with Zika virus, including microcephaly in newborns and Guillain-Barre syndrome. Inovio is developing its Zika vaccine with GeneOne Life Sciences (KSE:011000) and academic collaborators.

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.

Click here to view the full press release.