Pharma

Inovio developing vaccines for HIV, flu and cervical cancer

Dr. Joseph Kim is the CEO of Inovio Pharmaceuticals, a Blue Bell, Pennsylvania synthetic vaccine […]

Dr. Joseph Kim is the CEO of Inovio Pharmaceuticals, a Blue Bell, Pennsylvania synthetic vaccine developer that has three drugs in Phase 2 clinical trials for cervical cancer, HIV, and malaria. It started life as VGX Pharmaceuticals which Kim launched with his PhD professor David Weiner of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, until it did a reverse merger with Inovio in 2009, giving it a drug manufacturing base in Asia.

Q: Why did you start the company?

A: We started this company with the vision to develop new vaccines and pharmaceuticals – hepatitis C, cancer and a paradigm-shifting universal flu vaccine. We have been at this since December 2000. Since then, we have been growing and progressing.

Q: How did the company get its start?

A: Not unlike many other tech startups. After undergrad at MIT, I worked for Merck and worked to get a hepatitis vaccine launched. I won a doctorate fellowship program and they told me I could do my doctorate anywhere. I chose University of Pennsylvania because David Weiner had just launched a DNA vaccine. I worked in his lab in the mid-1990s. Then I went back to Merck and helped develop an HIV vaccine. I started the company after that.

These sorts of partnerships happen more often at Harvard and in San Francisco.

Q: Where did your initial investment come from?

A: It was started with seed funding from a friend from MIT. Eventually we raised $40 million in equity from 2001-2007, including from angel investing. During that time we turned one of our acquisitions into an affiliate — VGX International in South Korea,  a manufacturing center for testing.

Q: How many drugs are in clinical testing?

A: We have three compounds in phase 2 clinical testing. A therapeutic vaccine for cervical cancer for women infected by the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) that boosts the vaccinated woman’s immune system and would prevent it from progressing to cancer. We have a large phase 2 study in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Korea and South Africa.

We have one for leukemia ongoing in the UK with our academic partner the University of Southampton and funded by the National Cancer Institute Cancer Research Fund.

We have a vaccine for Hepatitis C in phase 2 testing.

Additionally, a universal flu vaccine study is in late phase 1. It can protect us from both known and unknown flu strains and is partially funded by the National Institute of Health Director Transformative Research Award. We also have an HIV vaccine program—it’s one of the most developed and is heavily funded by the NIH, the Department of Defense. We just finished a phase 1, 48-patient trial in the U.S. at five different sites. We also just launched a second phase 1 trial in Africa in partnership with the U.S. military.

Q: What’s the timeline for these vaccines?

A: We started all three in the first half of this year so we are in the early part of that.

We have one of the largest contracts for HIV development – $25 million – going into human testing in the second half of next year. With the hepatitis C vaccine, phase 2 will be completed by the first half of 2012.  We do expect to have interim results for the leukemia vaccine in the second half of 2012.

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