On Dec. 15, 2020, Inovio Pharma announced the company and a team of scientists from The Wistar Institute, AstraZeneca, the University of Pennsylvania, and Indiana University received a $37.6 million grant from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part of the U.S. DoD to use INOVIO’s innovative DNA-encoded monoclonal antibody (dMAb) technology to develop anti-SARS-CoV-2-specific dMAbs which could offer versatile capabilities to function as both a therapeutic and preventive treatment for COVID-19.

As part of DARPA’s two-year grant, INOVIO and Wistar teams will construct COVID-19 dMAb candidates mirroring AstraZeneca’s traditional recombinant monoclonal antibody candidates currently being tested in clinical trials to treat COVID-19. dMAb candidates can be quickly developed and produced in vivo, offering a cost-effective and scalable therapeutic and preventive option for treatment of SARS-CoV-2 virus infection. The dMAb candidates will then be advanced into preclinical studies and then into rigorous, first-in-human clinical trials within one year of funding.