In­ovio was one of the first vac­cine de­vel­op­ers to snag at­ten­tion for a jab that their ex­ecs said promised to end the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. Us­ing their own unique DNA tech, CEO Joseph Kim said it took just 3 hours to work it out.

But while ri­vals are rac­ing to the fin­ish line with am­bi­tious plans to make vast quan­ti­ties of their vac­cines with bil­lions of dol­lars of deals, In­ovio is still stuck at the start­ing line on man­u­fac­tur­ing.

The biotech — which has yet to de­vel­op a sin­gle ap­proved prod­uct in 4 decades — says it cur­rent­ly has been stymied by a stand­off with its longterm con­tract man­u­fac­tur­er. And In­ovio filed a law­suit to free it­self from the re­la­tion­ship and move on to new part­ners who can make hun­dreds of mil­lions of dos­es — if it pass­es muster.

The prob­lem, In­ovio claims in its law­suit, is that a Ko­re­an-owned com­pa­ny called VGXI, which has long been re­spon­si­ble for mak­ing the batch­es of vac­cines the biotech us­es in tri­als, can’t make the vac­cine in com­mer­cial quan­ti­ty and re­fus­es to trans­fer the tech­nol­o­gy re­quired to oth­ers who can — de­spite be­ing con­trac­tu­al­ly bound to do so.

VGXI is build­ing a plant, the biotech adds, but that won’t come on­line un­til 2022 — an eter­ni­ty in pan­dem­ic tim­ing, es­pe­cial­ly as a group of vac­cine mak­ers who have man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty ei­ther in-house or con­tract­ed or both are rac­ing to start pro­vid­ing vac­cines as ear­ly as this fall, with bil­lions of dos­es pos­si­ble next year.

In­ovio is ask­ing a judge for dam­ages as well as an or­der to shift the tech to new ven­dors.

While VGXI, based in The Wood­lands out­side of Hous­ton, TX, hasn’t filed a re­sponse yet, In­ovio in­clud­ed sev­er­al let­ters from their COO, Dorothy Pe­ter­son, say­ing that the man­u­fac­tur­ing tech in­volved is pro­pri­etary to her com­pa­ny. One oth­er let­ter from Pe­ter­son to a com­pa­ny called Ol­o­gy, which had sought to make the vac­cine for In­ovio, de­mand­ed that they stop us­ing tech that be­longed to VGXI.

Pe­ter­son al­leged that In­ovio vi­o­lat­ed their sup­ply agree­ment by go­ing to oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers — which In­ovio de­nied — but of­fered to work out a new mas­ter sup­ply agree­ment to take its place.

Like oth­er com­pa­nies that jumped in­to the Covid-19 race, In­ovio has seen its stock price gy­rate high­er on spec­u­la­tion over which com­pa­ny will be a suc­cess. Op­er­a­tion Warp Speed out of the White House re­port­ed­ly is set on as­sist­ing a small group of vac­cine de­vel­op­ers, like Mod­er­na. But In­ovio wasn’t men­tioned.

To­day, the biotech’s stock is down about 5%, but it’s still rough­ly triple the mark it trad­ed at in late Feb­ru­ary, when the out­break went glob­al.

For a look at all End­points News coro­n­avirus sto­ries, check out our spe­cial news chan­nel.

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After years as the top spending pharma TV advertiser, AbbVie’s Humira brand finally downshifted earlier this year, ceding much of its marketing budget to up-and-coming sibling meds Skyrizi and Rinvoq. However, now Humira is back on TV with ads for another condition — Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS).

The chronic and painful skin condition results in lumps and abscesses caused by inflammation or infection of sweat glands, most often in the armpits or groin. Humira was first approved to treat HS in 2015 and remains the only FDA-approved drug for the condition. Two TV ads both note more than 30,000 people with HS have been prescribed Humira.