Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc has announced the beginning of recruitment for its collaborative vaccine study for Middle East respiratory syndrome.

Inovio and GeneOne Life Science Inc are co-developing Inovio’s MERS vaccine (GLS-5300) in partnership with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) in Maryland, where the trial is being conducted.

The primary and secondary goals of this first-in-man phase I trial are to obtain safety and immunogenicity data. This trial represents the first MERS vaccine to be tested in humans for this disease that has no approved vaccines or treatments.

Dr J. Joseph Kim, Inovio President and CEO, said, “After partnering with WRAIR and receiving an IND approval from the FDA late last year, we are pleased to now open this trial with our collaborators. The MERS virus has triggered widespread outbreaks and deaths in the Middle East and Korea and the healthcare community is urgently exploring possible preventive and therapeutic solutions.

“Our broad experience with DNA-based immunotherapies and with MERS specifically suggests we can potentially make an important contribution to developing such a solution. As demonstrated by our recent vaccine development efforts for Ebola, we can readily apply Inovio’s technology to target other threatening infectious threats like MERS and Zika virus as well as other emergent infectious diseases.”

Read the full story at www.streetinsider.com