Aethlon Medical
| Type | Public (OTCBB: AEMD) |
|---|---|
| Industry | Healthcare, Biotechnology |
| Genre | Biotechnology |
| Founded | 1999 |
| Headquarters | San Diego, California, USA |
| Key people |
James A. Joyce, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Rodney S. Kenley, President James B. Frakes, Chief Financial Officer Richard H. Tullis, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer |
| Products |
The Aethlon ADAPT™ System The Aethlon Hemopurifier® HER2osome™ ELLSA™ Exosome Assay DARPA Sepsis Program |
| Website | www.aethlonmedical.com |
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This article relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (February 2012) |
Aethlon Medical Inc., (OTCBB: AEMD), public company based in San Diego, California and trades over-the-counter on the OTCBB under the ticker symbol "AEMD." The Aethlon Medical mission is to create innovative medical devices that address unmet medical needs in cancer, infectious disease, and other life-threatening conditions. Our Aethlon ADAPT™ System is a revenue-stage technology platform that provides the basis for a new class of therapeutics that target the selective removal of disease enabling particles from the entire circulatory system. The Aethlon ADAPT™ product pipeline includes the Aethlon Hemopurifier® to address infectious disease and cancer; HER2osome™ to target HER2+ breast cancer, and a medical device being developed under a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that would reduce the incidence of sepsis in combat-injured soldiers and civilians.
Contents |
[edit] The Aethlon ADAPT™ System
The Aethlon ADAPT™ system is an adaptive dialysis-like affinity platform technology that provides the foundation for an entirely new class of therapeutics that target the selective clearance of harmful agents from the entire circulatory system. Therapies that evolve from the Aethlon ADAPT™ system overcome the historic limitation of extracorporeal strategies that indiscriminately adsorb or remove particles solely by molecule size. In function, our device platform allows the immobilization of single or multiple affinity drug agents in the outer-capillary space of plasma membrane technologies as a means to provide rapid real-time clearance of corresponding targets without adding drug toxicity or interaction risks to established therapies. Beyond providing a novel regulatory and commercialization pathway for affinity drug agents, Aethlon ADAPT™ therapies can be implemented for use within the global infrastructure of dialysis machines and CRRT systems already located in hospitals and clinics.
At present, the Aethlon ADAPT™ product pipeline includes the Aethlon Hemopurifier® to address infectious disease and cancer; HER2osome™ to target HER2+ breast cancer, and a medical device being developed under a $6.8 million contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that would reduce the incidence of sepsis in combat-injured soldiers and civilians. As we advance our current pipeline of therapies toward market, we plan to further leverage our ADAPT™ system to generate new revenue sources through future government contracts or grants, and collaborations with organizations representing the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industry
[edit] The Aethlon Hemopurifier®
The Aethlon Hemopurifier® is a first-in-class medical device with broad-spectrum capabilities against viral pathogens, including the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and numerous bioterror and pandemic threats. Human studies have demonstrated the Hemopurifier® to be safe and provide average viral load reductions of greater than 50% during four-hour treatment periods in both HCV and HIV infected individuals without the administration of antiviral drugs. The device is currently the subject of a human clinical study in India to evaluate its ability to accelerate viral load depletion when utilized in combination with HCV standard of care drug therapy. An investigational device exemption (IDE) to initiate clinical studies in the United States is pending with The Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
In vitro studies have also documented that the Hemopurifier® captures exosomes underlying cancer, including colorectal, lymphoma, melanoma, ovarian, and breast cancer. We have expanded our exosome research programs through a collaborative agreement with the Sarcoma Oncology Center (SOC), based in Santa Monica, California. The SOC collaboration is studying the ex vivo effectiveness of the Aethlon Hemopurifier® to remove immunosuppressive exosomes from the blood of advanced-stage cancer patients. The study will evaluate 25 patients, five patients with metastatic cancer of the following types; non-small cell lung cancer, prostate cancer, melanoma, head and neck cancer, and sarcoma. Exosomes released by cancers have emerged to become an important therapeutic target in cancer care, as they are implicated in cancer survival, growth, and metastasis. Researchers have also identified that cancer-released exosomes assist tumors in evading the response of the immune system.
[edit] HER2osome™
HER2osome™ provides a therapeutic strategy to maximize the ability of the immune system and established drug therapies to combat HER2+ breast cancer, which is characterized by aggressive growth and poor prognosis resulting from the over-expression of HER2 protein. HER2osome™ is a novel medical device, whose goal is to inhibit HER2+ breast cancer progression by reducing the circulatory presence of HER2 protein and tumor-secreted exosomes that contribute to the development and progression of breast cancer. Research publications indicate that breast cancer exosomes suppress the immune response, stimulate angiogenesis, contribute to the spread of metastasis, and inhibit the therapeutic benefit of Herceptin® (trastuzumab), a leading monoclonal antibody treatment against the HER2+ breast cancer. As an adjunct therapeutic candidate, HER2osome™ offers to fill an unmet medical need and enhance the benefit of Herceptin® and standard of care chemotherapies without adding drug toxicity or interaction risks.
HER2osome™ leverages our Aethlon ADAPT™ system to allow the immobilization of a HER2 antibody and an exosome targeted affinity agent to provide a mechanism to clear both targets from the circulatory system of HER2+ breast cancer patients. Like all Aethlon ADAPT™ derived therapies, HER2osome™ will operate dialysate free, will not require replacement fluids, and can be utilized on dialysis machines or CRRT systems already located in hospitals and clinics worldwide.
[edit] ELLSA™ Exosome Assay
To support our therapeutic advances to eliminate the presence of deleterious exosomes from circulation, our researchers needed to create a diagnostic tool that would provide greater detection sensitivity than other products available in the marketplace. The result was ELLSA™, an enzyme-linked lectin-specific assay that has demonstrated the ability to identify and quantify the presence of exosomes underlying human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), tuberculosis (TB), and all forms of cancer tested to date. As our focus is directed towards advancing the pipeline of Aethlon ADAPT™ system therapies, we plan to license or sell this technology to an organization already established in the research diagnostics field.
[edit] DARPA Sepsis Program
On September 30, 2011, Aethlon Medical signed a $6.8 million contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a medical device that would reduce the incidence of sepsis in combat-injured soldiers and civilians. Additional details of the program are forthcoming.
[edit] References
- ^ "2010 Form 10-K Annual Report". SEC. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/882291/000101968711002256/aethlon_10k-033111.htm.
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