Aethlon Medical, www.aethlonmedical.com – a leading pioneer in the development of sophisticated therapeutic filtration technology for the prevention or amelioration of infectious diseases, including cancer (by removing immunosuppressive agents), reported today the reestablishment of concerted efforts to advance the Aethlon Hemopurifier® as a bioterrorism countermeasure within applicable US governmental programs.
The capacity of this revolutionary technology, to selectively target and remove from the circulatory system infectious viruses and immunosuppressive proteins, represents the most advanced and perhaps only truly broad-spectrum countermeasures for weaponized viruses.
The Hemopurifier is a very attractive candidate to entities like U.S. Health and Human Services Department (HHS), providing as it does a therapeutic agent capable of handling multiple bioterror threats via a dual-use functionality that can also be used to treat existing diseases like hepatitis-C and cancer.
Chairman and CEO of AEMD, Jim Joyce, noted how a change in government policies has opened the door to dual-use technologies like the Hemopurifier, giving the technology access to programs it formerly did not have and giving the Company access to non-dilutive capital resources.
Joyce described the Company’s current plan to update an investigational device exemption (IDE – already submitted to the FDA), whose approval would spell abundant opportunities to collect more extensive clinical data, leading to future US infectious disease and cancer studies.
The previous IDE specified the Hemopurifier as a single-use medical device for the removal of bioterror related viruses, yet due to the inability to conduct efficacy studies in humans, the primary treatment challenge has been the demonstrability of treatment safety. That said, the Company has shown profound viral load reductions in HIV- and HCV-infected cases.
The Hemopurifier has shown, through in-vitro studies, broad-spectrum functionality against bioterror and potential pandemic threats, confirming in particular the ability to capture:
• Dengue, Ebola and Lassa Hemorrhagic Viruses
• West Nile Virus
• H5N1 Avian Influenza Virus
• 2009 H1N1 Influenza Virus
• Reconstructed Spanish Flu of 1918 Virus
• Monkeypox Virus (a model for human Smallpox infection)
Recent assertions by the Obama administration and HHS regarding the plan to overhaul and improve strategic bioterrorism and pandemic countermeasures programs set the stage nicely for this shrewd and well-timed move by the Company.
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