Inovio Pharmaceutical's DNA Vaccine for MERS Virus Shows Promising Results in Preclinical Trial

Inovio Pharmaceuticals

announced today that preclinical testing of a DNA synthetic vaccine for the virulent Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS) induced robust and durable immune responses, demonstrating the potential for a SynCon® DNA vaccine to prevent and treat this deadly virus. Since 2012, when the virus was first identified, 153 cases from nine Middle Eastern countries have been reported and, alarmingly, 42% of these cases have been fatal. MERS is similar to the SARS virus which infected 8,000 people several years ago. MERS differs from SARS in that it appears to be less contagious, but MERS is almost five times as fatal as SARS, which killed 10% of those infected. There is no vaccine or effective treatment for MERS. In this study, DNA vaccine constructs targeting multiple MERS antigens were generated using Inovio's SynCon® vaccine platform. These SynCon constructs were administered via Inovio's CELLECTRA® electroporation-based delivery technology. The vaccine constructs were observed to induce strong neutralizing antibodies and broad CD8+ T cells in mice. These findings are vital given the importance of neutralizing antibodies in