Inovio Strikes $100M Coronavirus Vaccine Licensing Deal With China's Advaccine

Shares of Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc INO, which is developing a DNA vaccine against the novel coronavirus, were advancing Monday.

What Happened: Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania-based Inovio announced a collaboration and licensing agreement with China-based biotech Advaccine Biopharma to market its investigational vaccine INO-4800 in the Greater China region.

The agreement provides Advaccine with the exclusive rights to develop, manufacture and commercialize INO-4800 within Greater China, which includes mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

Advaccine will license its plasmid manufacturing process to Inovio for INO-4800 and other pipeline products. sublicense the rights to its manufacturing partners. Advaccine will also provide its clinical data to Inovio to be used in the latter's global regulatory filings for INO-4800.

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The Terms Of The Deal: Inovio stands to receive an upfront payment of $3 million as well as $108 million in milestone payments, contingent upon achievement of specified development and sales-based milestones for INO-4800 in Greater China.

Inovio is also entitled to receive royalties equivalent to a high single-digit percentage of annual sales of INO-4800 in the region.

Why It's Important: Following a clinical hold imposed by the FDA in late September, Inovio received the green light to commence the Phase 2 portion of the U.S. Phase 2/3 trial of INO-4800 in mid-November.

Inovio has also commenced a Phase 2 study of the vaccine candidate in China in collaboration with Advaccine.

"INOVIO's partnership with Advaccine enables us to leverage their deep expertise, capabilities and network across the region – making it possible to rapidly produce and if and when approved, distribute our vaccine candidate to more people across Greater China," CEO Joseph Kim said in a statement. 

INO Price Action: In premarket trading Monday, Inovio shares were rising 1.69% to $9.

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