Development and validation of delivery technology for gene based prophylactic vaccines

While conventional vaccines have been instrumental in fighting a number of diseases, they have proven less successful against pathogens that require a strong cellular immune response for protection such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis. A new and promisi ng vaccine technology is based on delivery of plasmid DNA encoding antigens. Injection of DNA vaccines results in transfection of host cells; production of antigen (s), and priming of humoral and cellular immune responses directed toward the expressed ant igen(s). The simplicity of DNA vaccines offers a number of benefits over conventional vaccines such as low cost in development and production, high stability and long shelf-life. To exploit these advantages it is necessary to resolve a major technical li mitation; poor uptake of the DNA vaccine by the cells. To this end, Inovio AS has developed electroporation based DNA delivery technology that can increase potency of DNA vaccines more than a 100 fold. The technology is currently being evaluated in severa l clinical trials to delivery DNA vaccines for therapeutic purposes. Recently, Inovio have started to pursue use of its technology for prophylactic vaccine delivery. The company would like to strengthen existing collaborations and/or develop new collabor ations in the area of prophylactic vaccine development. Inovio is currently in discussion with multiple international groups involved in vaccine development including academic and industrial groups in China and IAVI in New York. This project aims to expan d Inovios network further with the goal of submitting a proposal to the Norwegian Research Council for the development and validation of gene based vaccine candidates delivered using Inovios gene delivery technology. The application will be generated by I novio in collaboration with high quality international partners. Inovio will also develop a plan for how to improve its existing device be more suitable for prophylactic vaccine delivery.