US based INOVIO, the International Vaccine Institute (IVI), and Seoul National University Hospital have announced a partnership to start a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of INOVIO's COVID-19 vaccine INO-4800 in South Korea.

In attendance at the signing ceremony at SNU Hospital were IVI's Director General Dr. Jerome Kim and Deputy Director General of Science Dr. Manki Song, Dr. Anh Wartel (Associate Director General of EPIC and Head of Clinical Development and Regulatory) and Dr. Daniel Chul Woo Rhee (Project Lead), and SNU Hospital's President Yon Su Kim and Prof. Myung Don Oh.

The 2-stage trial of INO-4800, the first clinical study of COVID-19 vaccine in Korea, will assess the safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of the candidate vaccine in 40 healthy adults aged 19-50 years, and will further expand to enroll an additional 120 people aged 19-64 years.

The trial, which aims to start later in June, is funded by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) through INOVIO and is supported by the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention/Korea National Institute of Health. In normal circumstances, it would generally take several years to start clinical trials of a new vaccine. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the trial in Korea will be conducted just two months after a similar clinical study began in the United States in early April 2020.