News Article

Montco firm gets $500K to advance needle-free vaccine delivery device
Date: Jan 26, 2016
Source: bizjournals ( click here to go to the source)

Featured firm in this article: Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc of Plymouth Meeting, PA



Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. was awarded a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Army's Small Business Innovation Research to further development of the Montgomery County company's needle-free vaccine delivery device.

The Plymouth Meeting, Pa., company is working on technology to simultaneously administer multiple vaccines by means of a skin-surface, needle-free electroporation delivery. Electroporation is a process that uses a pulse of electricity to briefly open the pores in the cell membranes so medicine can be delivered through those temporary openings.

The primary goal of the Army-funded effort will be to further develop Inovio's device so it can be used to facilitate the rapid vaccination of U.S. troops stationed around the world against multiple infectious diseases, and protect civilian populations from pandemic threats.

Dr. J. Joseph Kim, the president and CEO of Inovio (NASDAQ: INO), said the company has developed a portable fully automatic device for its experimental cancer immunotherapies.

"It is our further goal to advance and commercialize a needle and pain-free electroporation device to be used particularly for prophylactic vaccination," Kim said. "This new grant will move us closer to achieving this goal, and enable us to target several important commercial infectious disease opportunities that will be well served by non-invasive vaccination."