OncoSec Medical Incorporated (OTCBB: ONCS), a developer of innovative medical approaches to treat solid tumor cancers with unmet medical needs, announced today that on March 24, 2011 it completed its acquisition of certain assets of Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE Amex: INO) and entered into a license agreement with Inovio, pursuant to the terms of an asset purchase agreement with Inovio entered into on March 14, 2011.
OncoSec made an initial payment of $250,000 to Inovio, completing the closing requirements of the purchase and license agreement between the companies. The agreement requires OncoSec to make additional payments of $2.75 million by March 24, 2013, and pay a royalty on commercial product sales. OncoSec has purchased from Inovio certain non-DNA vaccine electroporation technology and intellectual property useful for an electrochemical therapy against solid tumors. OncoSec has also licensed the right to use this electroporation technology to deliver gene-based cytokineimmune therapies for treating solid tumors.
Punit Dhillon, OncoSec's president and CEO, said: "We are pleased to secure OncoSec's initial funding announced last week and close the asset purchase and license agreement with Inovio. This transaction marks the official launch of OncoSec's plan to develop and commercialize this promising technology for the selective treatment of cancerous tumors. With millions of people in the US alone facing detrimental cosmetic, functional and pain outcomes resulting from the invasive treatments used today for various skin and other cancers, there is a clear need for new therapies to address these unmet needs. These electrochemical and gene-based cytokine therapies have previously achieved important clinical outcomes, and we look forward to initiating advanced stage clinical studies by the end of this year."
OncoSec purchased certain electroporation technology assets and licensed additional electroporation applications based on Inovio's industry-leading electroporation technology platform that, in addition to DNA vaccines and immune therapeutics, also efficiently delivers chemotherapeutic or gene-based cytokine agents for the treatment of cancerous tumors. When these chemotherapeutic or gene-based cytokine agents are injected into a locally targeted treatment area such as a tumor and the predominantly healthy tissue in the margin surrounding a tumor, they have been shown to selectively and quickly destroy the tumor and cancer cells in the tumor margin. The chemotherapeutic agent acts by directly killing cancerous cells at the delivery site. Gene-based cytokine agents act by inducing broad, non-antigen specific immune responses that have been shown to kill cancerous cells. Initial data has shown that, these therapies may enable heightened concentrations of medicine to be directed to the cancer while reducing overall dosage and moderating or eliminating side effects associated with systemically-applied therapeutic approaches. This optimized delivery is enabled by the local application of brief controlled electrical pulses to cells to temporarily and reversibly increase permeability of the cell membranes in locally targeted tissue, which may dramatically increase cellular uptake of a previously injected agent.
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