Shares of Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. gained 6.5% in premarket trading on Tuesday after the company said it had added Thermo Fisher Scientific as a manufacturing partner for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Thermo’s stock was down 0.2%. Inovio has announced a number of manufacturing partners to help it meet its target of making 100 million doses of the still investigational vaccine candidate in 2021. Thermo has been tasked with manufacturing drug substance and doing fill-and-finish work for the vaccine. Inovio has released limited data from its Phase 1 clinical trial, with plans to publish the full data in a peer-reviewed medical journal, and said it expects to start its Phase 2/3 trial this month, once it gets the go-ahead from the Food and Drug Administration. Inovio’s stock has rallied 190.0% this year, while the S&P 500 is up 6.0%.Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.
