Friday, February 24, 2006

Bird Flu Conference

A company we hadn't heard of is presenting at The Bird Flu Summit next week. It's called Aethlon, and they are developing a "Hemopurifier," see explanation below. The stock, AEMD is at .53, it could move nicely if their presentation is well-received.

The Hemopurifier
Aethlon Medical has developed a patented extracorporeal device, known as the Hemopurifier™, to address the treatment of viral conditions that are either resistant or evolve resistance to drug and vaccine therapies. The Hemopurifier converges the established scientific principals of hollow-fiber dialysis and affinity chromatography with the discovery of affinity agents that selectively bind envelope viruses. The result is an affinity treatment cartridge that separates and captures circulating viruses, viral proteins, and toxins before the occurrence of cell and organ infection. The treatment goal is to reduce viral load burden without drug toxicity so that the patient's natural immunity can recover to wage an effective battle against viral infection. However, the mechanical nature of the Hemopurifier also allows it to be deployed in conjunction with other therapies including drugs and vaccines, if available. An additional benefit stems from treatment access, as the Hemopurifier has been designed for utilization in the global infrastructure of dialysis and continuous renal replacement machines already present in hospitals and clinics.

Scientific articles classify the Hemopurifier to be both an immunotherapy and fusion inhibitor treatment. The Food And Drug Administration (FDA) has indicated that the Hemopurifier will be treated as a Class III Medical Device in U.S. regulatory submissions. Pre-clinical human blood studies have documented the effectiveness of the Hemopurifier in capturing HIV (The AIDS Virus), HCV (Hepatitis-C), and Orthopox Viruses related to human Smallpox. The mechanism of capture has been shown to be via the polysaccharide chains that reside on the surface glycoproteins of envelope viruses. Since the polysaccharide portions of the viral glycoproteins are attached via normal host cell (functions not under control of the virus), they are highly invariant. Moreover, the high abundance of polysaccharides allows viruses to escape immune surveillance. Thus, while many viral proteins are highly variable in their primary structure, the polysaccharide chains are nearly invariant, allowing for the capture of all strains and clades of many viruses. In fact, lectin derived affinity agents immobilized within the Hemopurifier have been shown to inhibit the growth of all tested strains of HIV and can capture of inhibit the growth of other envelope viruses including SIV, FIV, HCV, Measles, Mumps, Influenza, Ebola, Marburg, and Orthopox viruses. Recent studies indicate that the Hemopurifier affinity agent is also able to capture Dengue hemorrhagic fever virus. In conclusion, the Hemopurifier has expansive therapeutic capabilities that address: global pandemics (HIV-AIDS); chronic infectious diseases (Hepatitis-C); naturally evolving pathogens; and pathogens weaponized for bioterrorism attacks against U.S. military and civilian populations.

Ilene

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

This puppy is up 23% as of 3:45pm EST!!!

keep up the great work Allan, enjoying your ideas!

A said...

AEMD is Ilene's find and we're holding at least until next week's Bird Flu Summit, where CEO James Joyce will be presenting, "The Aethlon Hemopurifier as a Treatment for Drug Resistant Avian Flu".

A

Anonymous said...

whoops, sorry Ilene!

Up 33.33% today... i'll be watching for any conference news.

Anonymous said...

While the stock may continue to go up, the science behind the device may not hold up. Typically, these devices are used to decrease the blood levels of virus or other particles. They do not eliminate all virus particles in the body. As a result within a few hours the virus levels will quickly bounce back to above pretreatment levels. The argument that the immune system will take care of the remaining few particles is not a good one (because, the first infection starts with relatively few particles, and the immune system can not cope up with it).

Yash

A said...

Yash, Put on your Trader's Hat on this one, the play here is a 50c stock with the CEO presenting 4:00pm ET Monday at the Bird Flu Summit. Looking for a pop into and out of the presentation, that's all.......for now.


A

Anonymous said...

Hi, Yash,

"While the stock may continue to go up, the science behind the device may not hold up."

Agreed - the viruses are replicating so fast and doing their damage intracellularly. I wouldn't bet on this device as a cure for bird flu or any other viral disease.


"As a result within a few hours the virus levels will quickly bounce back to above pretreatment levels."


Your observations are also why I have no confidence Nanoviricides (NNVC.pk). (Are you familiar with that one?) Even worse than aiming to remove viruses from the blood stream, in this case, the nanoparticles/virus complexes must be left circulating in enormous quantities in the blood. AEMD's device is taking all this nano/viral debris out of the body. Also, it's possible their device might be used more appropriately in other types of diseases, but I haven't really made an effort to look into it -- they claim they can use this filtering device for a variety of pathogens and toxins. Any thoughts on that?

Regardless of the science and my lack of enthusiasm for it, I'm hoping the company makes a great presentation Monday evening and the stock goes up over the next few days.

Ilene

Anonymous said...

I have used devices based on a similar idea as well as the related concept of plasma exchange (plasmapheresis) quite extensively. They can buy you time, in a variety of situations (e.g. malarial infection, babesiosis etc). Having said that, Alan is quite right. It could have a nice pop and might be a nice trade..Yash

Anonymous said...

"I have used devices based on a similar idea as well as the related concept of plasma exchange (plasmapheresis) quite extensively. They can buy you time, in a variety of situations (e.g. malarial infection, babesiosis etc)."

Thanks, Yash. Can you explain more?

Anonymous said...

Oh..just that therapeutic plasma exchange/variants is a routine procedure and used for tens of medical diseases. In cases of a high malarial/babesiosis parasite counts in the blood, it is life saving because, if we can reduce the parasite count we have good drugs to kill the residual parasites. We dont have similar drugs for the viruses...Yash

Anonymous said...

thank you for this very informative exchange, esp in layperson's language -- for the pop-inclined, the following release came up on NNVC:
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060227/20060227005520.html?.v=1

here's hoping we can all enjoy that

curt504 said...

What's this group's thought on NVAX selling on the news by this Wednesday, earnings announcement date? I'm a bit tired of holding great little co's through earnings just to get the gap down and dump the next day.

My opinion is that earnings will of course be very small and won't live up to the hype and current PPS. But I can't explain today's buying at the open. Is this dumb retail buyers or informed commercial / fund buyers?

Thanks, curt