Inovio Pharmaceuticals appoints two to bolster scientific advisory board

Vaccine developer Inovio Pharmaceuticals (AMEX:INO) reported Tuesday it has appointed Thomas Edgington and Philip Greenberg to its scientific advisory board.
Thomas Edgington, the first appointee, is an emeritus professor of the Scripps Research Institute who has over 500 publications in biomedical sciences, and has filed over 25 patents.
He has served as a board member of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, and also as a member for the scientific advisory board of Halyzyme Therapeutics (NASDAQ:HALO).
Edgington is the founder and chairman of Corvas International, which was acquired by Dendreon (NASDAQ:DNDN). Additionally, he served as a director of Apollon, one of the earliest DNA vaccine companies which was acquired by Wyeth.
Wyeth was later purchased by Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) in October 2009 for $68 billion.
The second appointee, Philip Greenberg, is a professor of medicine of oncology and heads the program of immunology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre.
His career ranges from clarifying the principles that underlie the T-cell recognition of viruses and cancer cells to determining why such responses often fail to eliminate the viral pathogen or cancer.
"Conventional vaccines brought revolutionary benefits to modern medicine and we believe that Inovio's synthetic vaccine technology can provide similar benefits to society by addressing many cancers and difficult infectious diseases,” said Inovio’s CEO, Joseph Kim, in a statement.
“Edgington and Greenberg share our vision and we are honoured to have these two renowned medical research leaders join us in this important endeavour."
Blue Bell, Pennsylvania-based Inovio is developing next generation vaccines, known as DNA-based vaccines, to treat and prevent cancers and infectious diseases.
Its SynCon vaccines are designed to provide broad cross-strain protection against known as well as newly emergent unmatched strains of pathogens such as influenza.