Dallas, Texas 05/20/2014 (FINANCIALSTRENDS) –Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc (NYSEMKT:INO) announced today it acquired global rights (with the exclusion of China) for its early pre-clinical therapies that address Alzheimer’s disease & multiple sclerosis that are based on academic research carried out by Dr. Bin Wang. He is a professor at the Furan University – Shanghai Medical College. Dr. Wang is the pioneer in this field of DNA-therapies, and has worked very closely with University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. David Weiner. Dr. Wang was the main author on certain of the earliest DNA-vaccine papers & patents.
The new technologies
With these rights in view, the company will now make the clinical and the regulatory milestone-payments to the University. The newly-licensed technologies are all based on the patent-protected and the published discoveries by Dr. Wang & his collaborator, who have found a very novel way of generating inducible-regulatory T cells/ iTreg. the iTreg cells are closely involved in shutting-down the immune responses after they successfully eliminate the invading organisms, & also in the prevention of autoimmunity or the inflammatory diseases. In the multiple published pre- clinical studies, this particular approach generated the CD25-iTreg in its antigen-specific manner.
The novel approach
The novel approaches could also be used to develop various therapies that target many major inflammatory diseases such as multiple sclerosis and might be used in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc (NYSEMKT:INO)’s chief executive officer, Dr. J. Joseph Kim said that acquiring the early-stage-technologies is just 1 more step in the company’s ultimate goal to control the immune system to fight various diseases in a much more safe & effective manner using the company’s immune engineering platform. INO’s therapeutic cancer-vaccines in this clinic are designed to also properly activate & direct the T cells to kill the cancer cells. The new candidates are also designed to do the exact opposite by shutting-down any unwanted & aberrant T cell responses.