PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa., Nov. 21, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:INO) today announced that Dr. David B. Weiner, its co-founder, board member and chair of its scientific advisory board, has been selected as a “Top 20 Translational Researcher” for the year 2015 by the editors of Nature Biotechnology magazine. The selection is based on the number of medical innovations that led to patents a researcher was granted in a calendar year. The designation “translational researcher” refers to basic research that can move from the lab bench to become patented medicine.
Dr. Weiner’s patented innovations relate to advancing the field of DNA-based immunotherapies targeting challenging infectious diseases and cancers. Over his career he holds more than 100 issued and pending U.S. patents. From 1986 until 2015, Dr. Weiner’s lab was at the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine. In 2016, Dr. Weiner joined The Wistar Institute, the nation’s first independent biomedical research institute, an NCI-designated Cancer Center, and an international leader in cancer, immunology and infectious disease research, as Executive Vice President, Director of its Vaccine Center and the W. W. Smith Charitable Trust Endowed Professorship in Cancer Research.
Dr. J. Joseph Kim, Inovio's President and CEO, said, "This award acknowledges David’s innovation and commitment to creating tomorrow’s medicines with a revolutionary technology, DNA-based immunotherapies and vaccines, which Inovio is developing in early and late-stage clinical trials. While I can say I am personally proud of my association with Dr. Weiner, which is now decades long, I can also say that we at Inovio as a team have tremendous respect and appreciation for his innovation and dedication to this field and congratulate him on this award.”
About Dr. David B. Weiner
Dr. Weiner is a world-renowned leader in immunology as well as gene vaccines and immunotherapy. In scientific circles he is known as the “father of DNA vaccines.” He has more than 350 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals, including mainstream publications such as Scientific American, and has been designated by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the top-cited scientists in the world. An inventor of more than 100 issued and pending U.S. patents, Dr. Weiner has received numerous honors including election as a fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011 and the International Society for Vaccines in 2012. He was the recipient of the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award and received the Vaccine Industry Excellence Award for Best Academic Research Team in 2015 at the World Vaccine Congress. Dr. Weiner was honored with the prestigious Hilleman Lectureship in 2015 at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Grand Rounds session and received a Stone Family Award from Abramson Cancer Center for his groundbreaking work on DNA vaccines for cancer immune therapy.
David Weiner holds a Ph.D. in developmental biology from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, an M.S. in biology from the University of Cincinnati, and a B.S. in biology from SUNY at Stony Brook in Stony Brook, N.Y.
About Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Inovio is taking immunotherapy to the next level in the fight against cancer and infectious diseases. We are the only immunotherapy company that has reported generating T cells in vivo in high quantity that are fully functional and whose killing capacity correlates with relevant clinical outcomes with a favorable safety profile. With an expanding portfolio of immune therapies, the company is advancing a growing preclinical and clinical stage product pipeline. Partners and collaborators include MedImmune, The Wistar Institute, University of Pennsylvania, DARPA, GeneOne Life Science, Plumbline Life Sciences, Drexel University, NIH, HIV Vaccines Trial Network, National Cancer Institute, U.S. Military HIV Research Program, and Laval University. For more information, visit www.inovio.com.
This press release contains certain forward-looking statements relating to our business, including our plans to develop electroporation-based drug and gene delivery technologies and DNA vaccines, our expectations regarding our research and development programs and our capital resources. Actual events or results may differ from the expectations set forth herein as a result of a number of factors, including uncertainties inherent in pre-clinical studies, clinical trials and product development programs, the availability of funding to support continuing research and studies in an effort to prove safety and efficacy of electroporation technology as a delivery mechanism or develop viable DNA vaccines, our ability to support our broad pipeline of SynCon® active immunotherapy and vaccine products, the ability of our collaborators to attain development and commercial milestones for products we license and product sales that will enable us to receive future payments and royalties, the adequacy of our capital resources, the availability or potential availability of alternative therapies or treatments for the conditions targeted by the company or its collaborators, including alternatives that may be more efficacious or cost effective than any therapy or treatment that the company and its collaborators hope to develop, issues involving product liability, issues involving patents and whether they or licenses to them will provide the company with meaningful protection from others using the covered technologies, whether such proprietary rights are enforceable or defensible or infringe or allegedly infringe on rights of others or can withstand claims of invalidity and whether the company can finance or devote other significant resources that may be necessary to prosecute, protect or defend them, the level of corporate expenditures, assessments of the company's technology by potential corporate or other partners or collaborators, capital market conditions, the impact of government healthcare proposals and other factors set forth in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, our Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2016, and other regulatory filings from time to time. There can be no assurance that any product in Inovio's pipeline will be successfully developed or manufactured, that final results of clinical studies will be supportive of regulatory approvals required to market licensed products, or that any of the forward-looking information provided herein will be proven accurate.