Inovio Biomedical Corporation announced that it has established a new collaboration with the National Microbiology Laboratory of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the University of Pennsylvania to further evaluate Inovio DNA vaccine candidates against swine influenza A (H1N1) virus. As a part of its universal influenza vaccine program, Inovio has designed and manufactured consensus DNA vaccines for H1N1 influenza strains. These consensus vaccines, delivered using Inovio's proprietary electroporation technology, have the potential to provide protection against a broad scope of existing as well as currently unknown, unmatched influenza strains that could emerge one of the perpetual challenges in trying to protect against influenza. The purpose of this collaboration is to test these vaccine candidates against pandemic and seasonal influenza strains in animal models and will include testing against a recently identified swine H1N1 strain. Inovio and the University of Pennsylvania have previously collaborated and published on studies involving Inovio's consensus DNA vaccines.

David L. Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast Corp. and chairman of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, has been nominated to become the next chairman of the University of Pennsylvania's board of trustees. Cohen would replace James S. Riepe, who announced the nomination Wednesday at the conclusion of the school's fall meetings. Riepe, senior adviser and retired vice chairman of T. Rowe Price Group, has been the university's board chair since 1999. The move would be effective next Nov. 7.

The University of Pennsylvania announced that David Thornburgh has been named executive director of the University of Pennsylvania Fels Institute of Government. The 70-year-old Fels Institute trains current and future leaders for public service in government. In his current position as senior advisor to the Econsult Corporation, Thornburgh has been a consultant to nonprofit and for-profit clients on strategic planning, policy and communications issues. Thornburgh succeeds Donald Kettl, who will return to full-time research and teaching in the Department of Political Science at Penn and continue to serve on the Fels faculty and academic advisory committee.