Inovio Pharmaceuticals (NSDQ:INO) and its partner, GeneOne Life Science (KSE:011000), said today that the companies have dosed the first patient in a Phase I study designed to test a preventive vaccine against hepatitis C infection.
The companies plan to recruit 24 study participants to evaluate Inovio’s GLS-6150 candidate. Participants will include people who have a sustained virologic response following treatment for Hep. C, as well as healthy controls. They are slated to receive one of two doses of vaccine, administered intra-dermally and followed by electroporation with Inovio’s Cellectra device.
“Developing the first successful vaccine against hepatitis C virus is a highly ambitious endeavor but a truly impactful effort for global health as well as being transformative for us commercially,” Inovio’s president & CEO, Dr. J. Joseph Kim, said in prepared remarks.
“The key to a successful hepatitis C vaccine will be its ability to activate the body’s immune system to prevent or treat infection by a virus with multiple or ever-changing strains. Inovio’s innovative DNA-based technology platform is uniquely positioned to address this challenge and it has been optimizing over the last several years in demonstrating strong in vivo immune responses against very tough-to-treat viruses like HIV, Zika and flu. We are very excited to launch this study with GeneOne’s funding and execution in Korea and we look forward to the data in 2019,” he added.
