Inovio shares jump (again) on vax research pact

Shares of Inovio Biomedical jumped again on Monday after the San Diego-based biotech company announced a pact with the NIH Vaccine Research Center to explore new universal influenza jabs and speed development of swine flu vaccines. Inovio is one of a relative handful of small biotech companies that have been buoyed by the global H1N1 pandemic, with ever-larger estimates coming in for the amount of vaccine that the world will demand to fight off swine flu. The World Health Organization estimates that as many as two billion people will be infected worldwide by H1N1, slightly less than a third of the population. But the major vaccine makers may only be able to supply 900 million doses of a new vaccine. FierceBiotech Research