Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. INO, +4.05% and privately held Ology Bioservices Inc. said Tuesday they have been awarded an $11.9 million contract by the Department of Defense to work on Inovio's DNA technology to manufactuve vaccines, including Inovio's current COVID-19 candidate. Plymouth Meeting, Pa.-based Inovio has already won grants from Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a global organization based in Oslo, and the Gates Foundation to fund the development of the vaccine candiate, called INO-4800. The companies are being supported by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs with funding from the Defense Health Agency. "The aim of the program is to rapidly and efficiently deliver the vaccine to the Department of Defense for upcoming clinical trials," the companies said in a statement. Inovio develops immunotherapies and vaccines but hasn't yet had a product approved for treatment. The company has said it expects to start clinical trials in the U.S. with 30 participants in April. It also plans to launch human trials in China and South Korea that same month, and says that it has a total of 3,000 doses prepared for the trials in the three countries. Inovio said it expects to have the first results from the trial in the fall and to have 1 million does of the vaccine ready for additional clinical trials or emergency use by the end of the year. Inovio shares were up 14% premarket and have gained 83% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 SPX, -1.15% has fallen 20%.