2023-04-13 14:07:11 ET
Shares of Inovio Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: INO) were up 20% early Thursday afternoon after the biotech company announced that it will present its abstract for INO-4201 as an Ebola booster for rVSV-ZEBOV (Ervebo) at the 33rd European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) on Sunday. The stock is down more than 43% year to date and more than 72% over the past year.
Inovio has been trading below $1 a share since March 22, so it doesn't take much news to sway the stock's price one way or another. It's important to note that the abstract is for a booster that is still early in the process, having just completed a phase 1b trial. Inovio mainly focuses on DNA medicines to treat people with human papillomavirus (HPV) diseases, cancer, and infectious diseases.
A booster shot for Ebola would be important as nearly 50% of the people who get the disease die. The main concern with Inovio is the company lost $279.8 million last year and says it has only enough cash -- $253 million -- to last into the first quarter of 2025. The company has only a few late-stage drugs in its pipeline after it shelved VGX-3100 when it didn't meet the primary endpoint in its trial to treat cervical high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions. INO-4800 is in a phase 3 trial as a COVID-19 vaccine. It also had INO-5401, which it is partnering on with Regeneron , in a phase 2 trial to treat glioblastoma, a cancer that starts as a growth of cells in the brain or spinal cord.
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Why Inovio Pharmaceuticals' Shares Jumped on Thursday