Tracheal Stenosis

Fireside Chat, moderated by Hartaj Singh of Oppenheimer & Co., will be held on Wednesday, January 24, 2024, at 12:00pm ET PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa., Jan. 22, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- INOVIO (NASDAQ: INO), a biotechnology company focused on developing and commercializing DNA medicines to help treat and protect people from HPV-associated diseases, cancer and infectious diseases, today announced that it will participate in a virtual fireside chat on the potential treatment of Recurrent Respiratory Papillomatosis (RRP). INOVIO's President and CEO, Dr. Jacqueline Shea, and Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Michael Sumner, will be joined by Dr. Simon Best, Otolaryngologist at Johns Hopkins University and a Principal Investigator in INOVIO's Phase 1/2 trial with INO-3107. The fireside chat, titled "RRP - Disease Treatment Dynamics & Urgent Need for Therapeutic Modalities," will take place on Wednesday, January 24, 2024, at 12:00pm ET. Hartaj Singh, MBA, Managing Director of Biotechnology Equity Research at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., will moderate the discussion. A replay of the event will be made available shortly after its conclusion and will be archived for 90 days under the Events and Presentations page on the investor relations section of the INOVIO website following the event. Panel Participants Simon Best, MD, is an Associate Professor of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is a fellowship-trained laryngeal surgeon whose clinical interests are focused on voice and airway disorders, with a particular interest in RRP. He had led an NIH-funded laboratory focused on RRP, participated in clinical trials, spearheaded novel treatment paradigms, and sees patients from across the world for this disease. In addition, he treats the full range of voice disorders, including in professional voice users and singers, vocal cord paralysis, laryngeal cancer, precancerous vocal cord dysplasia, benign laryngeal lesions (polyps, cysts, nodules), and laryngeal and tracheal stenosis. Dr. Jacqueline Shea has served as INOVIO's President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) since May 2022. Dr. Shea joined the company in March 2019 as Chief Operating Officer (COO), serving as a key member of the executive team. Dr. Shea has more than 25 years' experience in the life sciences and biotech industries. Prior to joining INOVIO, she was the CEO at Aeras, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to developing new vaccines against tuberculosis (TB). She also held executive roles at Emergent BioSolutions and was the General Manager and Vice President of The Oxford-Emergent Tuberculosis Consortium. Dr. Shea has dedicated much of her career to developing innovative products to prevent and treat infectious diseases. Dr. Shea received a BSc Hons in Applied Biology from the University of Bath and a Ph.D. from the National Institute for Medical Research in the UK. Dr. Michael Sumner leads INOVIO's clinical-stage pipeline of DNA medicines. Dr. Sumner received his medical degree from the University of London, is a member of the Royal College of Physicians, and holds a Master of Business Administration. He brings 30 plus years of extensive pharmaceutical, medical and clinical experience driving many late-stage product approvals and supporting successful commercial products globally across multiple therapeutic areas. He previously served as CMO of Orexo AB since 2013 and prior to that held numerous European- and US-based leadership roles at Novartis, CSL Behring, Novo Nordisk and Shire Pharmaceuticals. About INOVIO INOVIO is a biotechnology company focused on developing and commercializing DNA medicines to help treat and protect people from HPV-related diseases, cancer, and infectious diseases. INOVIO's technology optimizes the design and delivery of innovative DNA medicines that teach the body to manufacture its own disease-fighting tools. For more information, visit . Contacts Media: Jennie Willson, (267) 429-8567, [email protected] Investors: Thomas Hong, (267) 440-4298, thomas[email protected] SOURCE INOVIO Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

BHV Partners has launched a new startup, Conus Airway, to develop medical devices aimed at improving anesthesia and surgery of the respiratory tract. The startup will develop devices based on technology designed by Carlos Gutiérrez, MD, head of the pediatric thoracic surgery department at the University and Polytechnic La Fe Hospital of Valencia. The medical devices are designed to allow simultaneous endotracheal dilation and ventilation. They are designed to reduce the risks associated with respiratory tract surgery, to improve results in different areas such as a complex anesthesia and narrowing of the respiratory system, to minimize the risk of cross-contamination between patients and medical staff, and to increase efficiency in managing this type of surgery. Conus will initially focus on developing two devices aimed at treating tracheal and bronchial stenosis in children; treatments that require dilation and ventilation of the respiratory tract as a result of malformations of the larynx or trachea, obesity, pregnancy, tracheal rupture, or infectious diseases like Covid-19. According to BHV Partners, the global market for medical devices for airway management is expected to reach $2.93 billion in 2025, with an annual growth rate of more than 6%. Image courtesy of BHV Partners Gutiérrez (above left) will serve as medical advisor to Conus Airway, while Marta Príncep (above middle), co-founder and CEO at BHV Partners, will be chair of the board of directors, and BHV Partners’ Helena Arumí (above right) will be interim CEO. The initial management team will be completed by Raquel Llorens, senior researcher from the R&D department at Aimplas (plastics technology center), and Vicente Ruedas, senior engineer, who will act as technical advisors. “It is really exciting to see that more than 30 years of experience as a pediatric thoracic surgeon has allowed us to develop intuitive and versatile medical devices to improve future results in different areas of respiratory illness; an area currently showing high levels of complication worldwide. We hope our technology will make management more efficient by combining several tools in a single device, becoming a powerful solution for the patient,” Gutiérrez said. Conus Airway will set up its headquarters in the new La Marina international technology hub run by Biohub in Valencia, Spain. “It is an honor to be involved as interim CEO of Conus Airway, accompanied by the scientific excellence of Dr. Carlos Gutiérrez, and to contribute to a technology that will be a turning point in the management of respiratory surgery. I am excited to be able to provide a corporate vision and to work on the business plan, organizational development and fundraising,” Arumí said. BHV Partners claims to be the first venture builder specialized in healthcare in Southern Europe.

Harvard Apparatus Regenerative Technology (NSDQ:HART) said last week that it learned of the death of a Russian patient implanted with its artficial trachea, but wasn’t informed of the cause of death. The patient, implanted 2 years ago with a trachea grown using HART’s bioreactor technology, was participating in a clinical trial in Russia, according to a press release. HART said it learned of the death from the study’s principal investigator. "The patient survived more than 2 years from the initial regenerated trachea transplant surgery that took place in 2012," HART said. "Prior to that surgery, the patient had suffered several instances of life-threatening respiratory failure and infections. The patient was indicated for the initial transplant surgery because there was both a progression of the respiratory failure and traditional tracheal surgery was impossible." Other patients implanted with the artificial trachea, grown using a patients own cells which are seeded onto a porous plastic scaffold, have fared much better. It’s been 6 years since the 1st patient, Claudia Castillo, was implanted with an artificial trachea; last year a follow-up study published this month in the journal The Lancet revealed that Castillo was "living normally without any complications or rejection of the implanted airway" 5 years on. Last month HART CEO David Green told MassDevice.com that news of the Castillo procedure prompted him to get in on the game. HART predecessor Harvard Bioscience eventually launched a commercial version of the bioreactor researchers used to grow the bronchus. "Typically, the old trachea is narrowed, so the patient’s having difficulty breathing. Usually, that’s because there’s a tumor, like a trachea cancer growing in the throat, or because there’s tracheal stenosis, which means a narrowing of the trachea caused by some kind of physical damage," Green told us. "Typically, it starts with a road accident, and that’s what leads to the physical damage of the trachea. One of those 2 things, either physical damage or a trachea cancer, is what causes the patient to need this kind of transplant."