AstraZeneca bags another cancer drug deal, this time with Inovio

Based on management’s projections and analysis, the Company believes that cash and short-term investments meet its planned working capital requirements through the end of 2018.

AstraZeneca signed a deal for a cancer drug worth $700 million with Inovio. The increase in revenue was primarily due to the $3.0 million milestone payment earned in the second quarter 2015 under our partnership agreement with Roche. The gross proceeds of this offering were $87.4 million. With its immunotherapy platform consisting of SynCon products, as well as its CELLECTRA electroporation delivery technology, Inovio has developed a pipeline of pre-clinical and clinical stage products that have generated in vivo (in the body) immune responses.

The agreement marks AZ’ third in the cancer field this week, following a deal with Heptares to develop the small molecule immuno-oncology candidate HTL-1071 across a range of cancers, and a clinical trial collaboration with Mirati Therapeutics, which will look at a combination of MedImmune’s investigational anti-PDL1 immune checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab (MEDI4736) and Miratir’s investigational spectrum-selective histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor mocetinostat. The biopharmaceutical company reported ($0.09) earnings per share for the quarter, beating the Thomson Reuters consensus estimate of ($0.13) by $0.04, MarketBeat reports.

As mentioned above, Inovio Pharmaceuticals presented incredible financial data; blowing earnings expectations out of the water.

According to the agreement, MedImmune will take on the full funding responsibility of any developmental costs that arise.

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has reached a deal with Inovio Pharmaceuticals worth a stunning $727.5 million – all for an experimental vaccine that the medical community is hopeful could prevent human papillomavirus (HPV).

INO-3112 combines Inovio’s VGX-3100, its immunotherapy targeting HPV-caused diseases, with its DNA-based immune activator encoded for IL-12.

Dr. David Berman, senior vice president and head of the oncology innovative medicines unit, MedImmune, said, “Today’s collaboration with Inovio leverages our deep internal expertise in the use of vaccines to drive antigen-specific T-cell responses”. Inovio will receive development, regulatory and commercialization milestone payments and will be eligible to receive royalties on worldwide net sales for these additional cancer vaccine products.