INOVIO to Host Webinar "DNA Medicines: From COVID-19 to Cancer"

PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa., May 26, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- INOVIO (NASDAQ:INO), a biotechnology company focused on rapidly bringing to market precisely designed DNA medicines to protect and treat people from infectious diseases, cancer, and diseases associated with HPV, today announced it will hold a webinar event on June 1 from 10 AM to noon EDT to detail its proprietary DNA medicines technology and provide updates on INO-4800, its DNA vaccine in Phase 1 clinical development for COVID-19, and INO-5401, its DNA immunotherapy designed to treat glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most common and aggressive type of brain cancer. Preclinical data on INO-4800 demonstrating robust neutralizing antibody and T cell immune responses was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications on May 20, 2020. Data demonstrating 85% of newly diagnosed glioblastoma patients were alive 12 months following treatment with INO-5401, in combination with INO-9012 and PD-1 inhibitor Libtayo^® (cemiplimab), will be featured at an oral poster presentation at the ASCO 2020 Virtual Scientific Program, May 29-31, 2020.

Participating in the webinar event will be INOVIO leadership and world-renowned scientists, including:

• J. Joseph Kim, Ph.D., INOVIO President, CEO and Director
• David B. Weiner, Ph.D., Executive Vice President and Director, Vaccine Center, The Wistar Institute; INOVIO Director and Scientific Advisory Board Member
• Stanley A. Plotkin, M.D., Emeritus Professor, The Wistar Institute and the University of Pennsylvania; INOVIO Scientific Advisory Board Member
• Kate E. Broderick, Ph.D., INOVIO Senior Vice President, Research and Development, Team Lead for COVID-19 Vaccine Development
• Jeffrey Skolnik, M.D., INOVIO Vice President, Clinical Development, Oncology
• David Reardon, M.D., Clinical Director, Center for Neuro-Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Coordinating Principal Investigator of GBM-001/INO-5401 Phase 1/2 Investigator

The event will be held virtually and include a Q&A. To register, please go to INOVIO's website at http://ir.inovio.com/events-and-presentations/default.aspx. An archived version of the presentation will be made available through the INOVIO Investor Relations events page following the event.

About INOVIO's DNA Medicines Platform

INOVIO has 15 DNA medicine clinical programs currently in development focused on HPV-associated diseases, cancer, and infectious diseases, including coronaviruses associated with MERS and COVID-19 diseases being developed under grants from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). DNA medicines are composed of optimized DNA plasmids, which are small circles of double-stranded DNA that are synthesized or reorganized by a computer sequencing technology and designed to produce a specific immune response in the body.

INOVIO's DNA medicines deliver optimized plasmids directly into cells intramuscularly or intradermally using INOVIO's proprietary hand-held smart device called CELLECTRA^®. The CELLECTRA device uses 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. Once inside the cell, the DNA plasmids enable the cell to produce the targeted antigen. The antigen is processed naturally in the cell and triggers the desired T cell and antibody-mediated immune responses. Administration with the CELLECTRA device ensures that the DNA medicine is efficiently delivered directly into the body's cells, where it can go to work to drive an immune response. INOVIO's DNA medicines do not interfere with or change in any way an individual's own DNA. The advantages of INOVIO's DNA medicine platform are how fast DNA medicines can be designed and manufactured, the stability of the products which do not require freezing in storage and transport, and the robust immune response, safety profile, and tolerability that have been demonstrated in clinical trials.

With more than 2,000 patients receiving INOVIO investigational DNA medicines in more than 6,000 applications across a range of clinical trials, INOVIO has a strong track record of rapidly generating DNA medicine candidates to meet urgent global health needs.

About INOVIO

INOVIO is a biotechnology company focused on rapidly bringing to market precisely designed DNA medicines to protect and treat people from infectious diseases, cancer, and diseases associated with HPV. INOVIO is the first and only company to have clinically demonstrated that a DNA medicine can be delivered directly into cells in the body via a proprietary smart device to produce a robust and tolerable immune response. Specifically, INOVIO's lead candidate VGX-3100, currently in Phase 3 trials for precancerous cervical dysplasia, destroyed and cleared high-risk HPV 16 and 18 in a Phase 2b clinical trial. High-risk HPV is responsible for 70% of cervical cancer, 91% of anal cancer, and 69% of vulvar cancer. Also in development are programs targeting HPV-related cancers and a rare HPV-related disease, recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (RRP); non-HPV-related cancers glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) and prostate cancer; as well as externally funded infectious disease DNA vaccine development programs in Zika, Lassa fever, Ebola, HIV, and coronaviruses associated with MERS and COVID-19 diseases. Partners and collaborators include Advaccine, ApolloBio Corporation, AstraZeneca, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)/Department of Defense (DOD), GeneOne Life Science/VGXI, HIV Vaccines Trial Network, International Vaccine Institute (IVI), Medical CBRN Defense Consortium (MCDC), National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Ology Bioservices, the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Plumbline Life Sciences, Regeneron, Richter-Helm BioLogics, Roche/Genentech, University of Pennsylvania, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and The Wistar Institute. INOVIO also is a proud recipient of 2020 Women on Boards "W" designation recognizing companies with more than 20% women on their board of directors. For more information, visit www.inovio.com.

CONTACTS:

Media: Jeff Richardson, 267-440-4211, [email protected]
Investors: Ben Matone, 484-362-0076, [email protected]

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements relating to our business, including our plans to develop DNA medicines, our expectations regarding our research and development programs, including the planned initiation and conduct of preclinical studies and clinical trials, and the availability and timing of data from those studies and trials. Actual events or results may differ from the expectations set forth herein as a result of a number of factors, including uncertainties inherent in pre-clinical studies, clinical trials, product development programs and commercialization activities and outcomes, the availability of funding to support continuing research and studies in an effort to prove safety and efficacy of electroporation technology as a delivery mechanism or develop viable DNA medicines, our ability to support our pipeline of DNA medicine products, the ability of our collaborators to attain development and commercial milestones for products we license and product sales that will enable us to receive future payments and royalties, the adequacy of our capital resources, the availability or potential availability of alternative therapies or treatments for the conditions targeted by us or our collaborators, including alternatives that may be more efficacious or cost effective than any therapy or treatment that we and our collaborators hope to develop, issues involving product liability, issues involving patents and whether they or licenses to them will provide us with meaningful protection from others using the covered technologies, whether such proprietary rights are enforceable or defensible or infringe or allegedly infringe on rights of others or can withstand claims of invalidity and whether we can finance or devote other significant resources that may be necessary to prosecute, protect or defend them, the level of corporate expenditures, assessments of our technology by potential corporate or other partners or collaborators, capital market conditions, the impact of government healthcare proposals and other factors set forth in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019, our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2020 and other filings we make from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. There can be no assurance that any product candidate in our pipeline will be successfully developed, manufactured or commercialized, that final results of clinical trials will be supportive of regulatory approvals required to market products, or that any of the forward-looking information provided herein will be proven accurate. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise these statements, except as may be required by law.

SOURCE INOVIO Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

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