Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced it has licensed a veterinary vaccine for foot and mouth disease (FMD) to Plumbline Life Sciences, an animal health company headquartered in South Korea. Plumbline will fund all development activities for this FMD vaccine. Inovio will receive milestone payments as well as royalties on product sales from Plumbline for commercial rights to this FMD synthetic vaccine in Asia, excluding Japan. In 2014, Inovio sold other animal health assets to Plumbline for cash and a significant equity position in the company.

Inovio’s FMD DNA vaccine administered to sheep and pigs in previous studies showed strong protective neutralizing antibodies, demonstrating its potential to prevent the virus from infecting livestock animals.

The FMD virus is one of the most infectious diseases affecting farm animals including cattle, swine, sheep and goats, and is a serious threat to global food safety. Once an area is exposed to FMD, livestock & dairy exports are ceased and herds are culled. For example, in a major FMD outbreak in the UK in 2001 more than four million animals were slaughtered, resulting in more than $10 billion (USD) in economic losses. In a 2011 FMD epidemic in South Korea, more than 3.3 million animals, mostly swine, were culled in an attempt to keep the disease from spreading.

Because FMD can spread rapidly and beyond regional boundaries there is a need to develop vaccines that can simultaneously target different regional serotypes of FMD in a single vaccine. Inovio's SynCon technology enables rapid development of vaccines that can cover multiple serotypes simultaneously with a single formulation. Inovio has generated and tested DNA vaccine constructs targeting all seven main FMD virus serotypes.

Dr. J. Joseph Kim said, “With Inovio’s focus on human immunotherapies to fight cancers and infectious diseases, we want to monetize non-core assets. This is our second license agreement with Plumbline to enable the development of animal health products and market opportunities. FMD pandemics are a worldwide threat to food supply and society for which Inovio's FMD vaccine could provide a global solution."