INOVIO, a biotechnology company focused on bringing to market precisely designed DNA medicines to treat and protect people from infectious diseases and cancer, announced that Thermo Fisher Scientific, the world leader in serving science, has signed a letter of intent to manufacture INOVIO’s DNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate INO-4800.

Thermo Fisher joins other contract development and manufacturing organizations in INOVIO’s global manufacturing consortium, enabling INOVIO to potentially scale commercial production of INO-4800. With its consortium of third-party manufacturers, INOVIO plans to have 1001 million doses of INO-4800 manufactured in 2021, subject to FDA approval of INO-4800 for use as a COVID-19 vaccine. Thermo Fisher plans to manufacture INO-4800 drug substance as well as perform fill and finish of INO-4800 drug product at its commercial facilities in the US. At peak capacity, Thermo Fisher projects that it could produce at least 100 million doses of INO-4800 annually.

“INOVIO welcomes Thermo Fisher to our global consortium of commercial scale vaccine manufacturers and we look forward to partnering with them on this critically important endeavor,” said Dr. J. Joseph Kim, INOVIO’s President & Chief Executive Officer. “Thermo Fisher’s global capabilities and scale will be central to our production progress – the organization’s commitment to quality, reliable production will be key to our ability to meet the urgent, global demand for a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19.”

Leon Wyszkowski, President, Commercial Operations for Thermo Fisher’s Pharma Services business, said, “INOVIO has truly embraced the value of our end-to-end capabilities – starting with our initial work on clinical trials through supporting their commercial needs today. We remain extremely well-positioned to support INOVIO on its mission to manufacture 100 million doses of vaccine in 2021.”

“INOVIO is very excited to partner with Thermo Fisher for the manufacture of DNA plasmid drug substance and drug product,” said Robert J. Juba Jr., INOVIO’s Vice President of Biological Manufacturing and Clinical Supply Management. “Thermo Fisher provides an end-to-end solution for manufacturing, labeling, packaging and distribution that we believe will help us to provide hundreds of millions of doses of INO-4800 to the US and the rest of the world.”

Thermo Fisher Scientific will join existing partners Richter-Helm BioLogics and Ology Biosciences in INOVIO’s global manufacturing consortium. INOVIO is in active discussions with additional manufacturers to join the consortium as INOVIO seeks to complement its existing members with additional manufacturing partnerships to meet global supply needs. Having multiple manufacturers involved in the production of INO-4800 is intended to support timely, cost-effective and scalable production of this DNA-based vaccine. INOVIO’s third-party manufacturers will produce the patent-protected formulation for INO-4800, developed to enhance stability of the vaccine with a favorable tolerability profile. Importantly, INO-4800 has shown an excellent thermo-stability profile. INOVIO’s other platform DNA vaccine candidates have demonstrated a shelf life of greater than 5 years when refrigerated and stability for more than 30 days at 37 degrees Celsius, and more than one year at room temperature. INOVIO’s candidates also do not need to be frozen during transport or storage, a vital factor when implementing immunizations on a global scale. INO-4800 is administered via INOVIO’s proprietary CELLECTRA® smart delivery device, which delivers the vaccine locally into the patient’s skin, a process that takes only a few seconds.

INOVIO is conducting a Phase 1 clinical trial of INO-4800 in the United States and has submitted the full trial results for the first 40 subjects for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The company plans to initiate its Phase 2/3 COVID-19 vaccine trials in September, subject to FDA clearance to proceed.

Earlier this summer, INOVIO received $71 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to support the large-scale manufacture of the company’s proprietary CELLECTRA® 3PSP and the procurement of CELLECTRA® 2000 devices. The DoD contract builds upon two separate prior $5 million grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), to accelerate the testing of CELLECTRA® 3PSP. Initial development of this next generation CELLECTRA 3PSP smart device began in 2019 with $8.1 million in funding from the medical arm of the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Medical CBRN Defense Consortium.