BLUE BELL, Pa., Feb. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Inovio
Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE Amex:
INO), a leader in the development of therapeutic and preventive
vaccines against cancers and infectious diseases, announced today
that its new generation DNA vaccine delivery technology, which
provides the powerful enabling capabilities of electroporation
without contacting the skin, is highlighted in a paper published in
the scientific journal Human Vaccines. While current Inovio
electroporation devices have been shown to be safe and
well-tolerated in multiple human studies, Inovio has been advancing
research to achieve the most optimal device characteristics to
facilitate mass vaccinations.
Dr. J. Joseph Kim, Inovio’s president and CEO, said, “Inovio
continues to raise the bar in terms of technological innovation
that will further optimize electroporation-based delivery of
DNA-based therapeutics and vaccines for patients of all ages. While
still enabling levels of vaccine potency that we have observed with
our existing electroporation devices, this new contactless delivery
method is non-invasive and amenable to the design of devices that
are low-cost, portable, and extremely easy to use.”
Drug delivery into skin, or dermal tissue, is the most
attractive method given that the skin is the largest, most
accessible, and most easily monitored organ of the human body, and
it is highly immunocompetent (able to recognize antigens and mount
an immune response to them). The paper appearing in Human
Vaccines, “Piezoelectric permeabilization of mammalian dermal
tissue for in vivo DNA delivery leads to enhanced protein
expression and increased immunogenicity,” authored by Inovio
scientists, describes an innovative electroporation method
optimized for delivery into skin. This new method is based on
piezoelectricity, which is the generation of an electric field or
electric potential b
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