After one or two vaccinations, subjects who were previously not affected by Zika showed antigen-specific antibody responses to the virus during initial testing in both low dose and high dose vaccine groups.
Apart from that, GLS-5700 was well tolerated with no major safety worries noted in any of the 40 subjects following 14 weeks from the initial dosage as per the latest filed data from the trial.
Inovio president & CEO Joseph Kim said: “These early clinical results show that Inovio is on track to rapidly develop Zika countermeasures for this disease that has no currently existing vaccine or treatment.
“Our synthetic vaccine technology allows rapid development of new products, leading Inovio to be the first to create a Zika vaccine, the first to generate preclinical data, the first to initiate human testing, and now first to report positive clinical data.”
The phase I trial, which is an open-label, dose-ranging study of the Zika vaccine is assessing the safety, tolerability, induction and persistence of the antibody and T cell responses specific to Zika in healthy adult volunteers after 60 weeks of the dosage.
GLS-5700’s preclinical testing showed that the vaccine protected animals that were exposed to the Zika virus from infection, brain damage and death.
Inovio’s GLS-5700 is being developed with GeneOne Life Science along with US and Canadian academic collaborators.
Earlier in the month, Inovio and The Wistar Institute secured an $8.8m grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for developing a monoclonal antibody based on DNA that can deliver fast-acting protection against Zika disease as well as its debilitating effects.