Inovio Fails to Impress With HPV Business Update

Health and Healthcare

Published: March 29, 2016 11:55 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 11:24 am

Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: INO) made waves early on Tuesday morning following an update for its human papillomavirus (HPV) treatment. The company announced a clinical strategy update to take its INO-3112 HPV immunotherapy into human studies in combination with selected immunotherapy molecules from MedImmune.

For some background on MedImmune, it is the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE: AZN), which is part of an existing partnership between the two companies.

These companies intend to advance combination immunotherapies in populations with continued unmet need, the potential for a registrable endpoint and an expedient clinical path. Considering these goals, the planned enrollment of a European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) trial to study cervical cancer patients with INO-3112 before and after chemoradiation in an adjuvant setting will not go forward.

Under the existing agreement, Inovio and MedImmune will also co-develop up to two additional DNA-based cancer vaccines not included in Inovio’s current product pipeline, which MedImmune will have the exclusive rights to develop and commercialize. Inovio will receive development, regulatory and commercialization milestone payments and will be eligible to receive royalties on worldwide net sales for these additional cancer vaccine products.

Dr. J. Joseph Kim, president and CEO of Inovio, commented:

HPV-related cancers represent an important unmet clinical need. We believe our combination immunotherapy approach with MedImmune could address a missing link in the spectrum of available and emerging treatment approaches. Following our ongoing preparations, we expect the initiation of the first clinical trial with this combination to be an important step for Inovio in 2016.

Shares of Inovio traded up less than 1% at $8.08 Tuesday morning, with a consensus analyst price target of $19.00 and a 52-week trading range of $4.50 to $10.83.

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