Inovio Shares Off 4% After EORTC Trial Enrollment Will Not Go Through

Shares of Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ: INO) were trading lower by nearly 4 percent Tuesday morning after the company issued a clinical strategy update.

Inovio Pharmaceuticals stated that it will take its INO-3112 HPV immunotherapy into human studies in combination with selected immunotherapy molecules from MedImmune. The two companies will advance combination immunotherapies in populations with continued unmet need, the potential for a registerable endpoint and an expedient clinical path.

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Inovio Pharmaceuticals continued that with the new goals and objectives, it will no longer proceed with a previously planned enrollment of a European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) trial to study cervical cancer patients with INO-3112.

"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," said Dr. J. Joseph Kim, Inovio's President and CEO.

At time of writing, Inovio was down 1.25 percent at $7.92.