Covid-19 roundup: In­ovio gets FDA green­light to en­ter hu­man tri­als; Trump push­es untest­ed malar­ia drugs again

In­ovio, one of the clutch of com­pa­nies work­ing on a Covid-19 vac­cine, has been cleared by the FDA to kick off in-hu­man stud­ies of its ex­per­i­men­tal vac­cine can­di­date. The Penn­syl­va­nia com­pa­ny se­cured fund­ing from the Coali­tion for Epi­dem­ic Pre­pared­ness In­no­va­tions (CEPI) and the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion to sup­port its ef­fort.

The tri­al test­ing the DNA vac­cine, INO-4800, in up to 40 healthy vol­un­teers is set to be­gin this week, and the first dose is planned to be ad­min­is­tered to­day. Each par­tic­i­pant will re­ceive two dos­es of INO-4800 a month apart, and the ini­tial im­mune re­spons­es and safe­ty da­ta from the study are ex­pect­ed by late sum­mer, the com­pa­ny said. Shares of In­ovio — which in four decades of ex­is­tence has not suc­cess­ful­ly de­vel­oped a prod­uct — $INO jumped about 11% to $8.60 in pre­mar­ket trad­ing.

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