Inovio Pharmaceuticals Tuesday reported inking a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, or CRADA, with the United States Department of Homeland Security's, or DHS's, Directorate of Science and Technology-run Plum Island Animal Disease Center. The agreement aims to study the efficacy of the SynCon vaccine developed by Innovio for foot and mouth disease, or FMD, which affects cattle, sheep and pigs.

The research is restricted to the Center due to the "highly infectious" nature of FMD which poses the hazard that the disease may spread to farm animals. Inovio recently announced the testing of several synthetic vaccine candidates, which are non-live and non-replicating, besides being easy to manufacture. These vaccines were shown to result in strong antibody and T cell immune response.