By
Godfrey Benjamin
October 4th, 2023
Inovio has secured funding from the U.S Department of Defense to expedite the development and production of its Cellectra 3PSP Smart Devices for the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine. INO stock is up.
The majority of the world’s governments are focused on the need to speedily get a cure for the COVID-19 disease that was first discovered in Wuhan China in December 2019. The determination by countries particularly those with advanced economies like the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and Germany has spiked a dep investment in pharmaceutical companies working to develop a cure. Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ: INO) is on the limelight after securing a $71 million contract from the United States Department of Defense to scale up the manufacturing of its Cellectra 3PSP smart devices.
As many components or devices are required in the manufacturing and administering of a vaccine, the United States government is positioning itself to be well equipped should the vaccine be finally discovered and approved by the FDA.
The impact of government funding on INO stock has been tremendous. The stock saw a 22.4% high on Tuesday and is currently trading in the green. It is 15.04% up above Wednesday’s closing price of $23.87. The current INO stock price is $27.46. The stocks have a higher hope of attaining new highs should there be a remarkable breakthrough in the company’s vaccine research.
Inovio Background and COVID-19 Research
Inovio Pharmaceuticals is an American biotechnology company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of synthetic DNA products for treating cancers and infectious diseases. The Inovio technology is based on inserting engineered DNA into cells where it becomes incorporated into proteins involved in the immune response to cancers and viruses by producing T cells and antibodies that aid recovery from infection. The technology can be “targeted” to specific types of cancer and immune diseases, such as those produced by a virus.
In February 2020 after receiving details of the genetic sequence of the coronavirus, Inovio announced that it had produced a preclinical DNA-based vaccine as a potential therapy for COVID-19. Inovio is in competition to develop a coronavirus vaccine with numerous other companies, which were conducting preclinical or early-stage human research on more than 170 vaccine candidates, as of late June. In April 2020, Inovio began a Phase I trial of the COVID-19 vaccine candidate, INO-4800.
Of Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc products, the Department of Defense is primarily interested in the Cellectra 3PSP device. The Cellectra devices providing a brief electrical pulse to reversibly open small pores in the cell to allow the plasmids to enter, overcoming a key limitation of other DNA and other nucleic acid approaches, such as mRNA. As a key player in the fight against the coronavirus, INO is positioning itself as an organization that will save the human race. A tag investors love to associate with.
Strides of Other Vaccine Candidates
The World Health Organization has identified about a hundred and seventy pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies working on the COVID-19 vaccine. AstraZeneca Plc (NYSE: AZN), a British-Swedish company was reported by Coinspeaker to have attained a positive milestone in its clinical trial for the COVID-19 vaccine.
Just as the United States is well invested in Inovio, so also is the German government well invested in CureVac whose COVID-19 vaccine research has progressed to the clinical trial stage. Other vaccine candidates include Moderna Inc (NASDAQ: MRNA), Novavax Inc (NASDAQ: NVAX), The Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and a host of others.
With the efforts of these companies and support from the government and the WHO, the world may soon celebrate the discovery of a vaccine for COVID-19, a virus that has tormented our world.