SAN DIEGO, June 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Aethlon Medical, Inc. (OTCBB: AEMD), the pioneer in developing selective therapeutic filtration devices to address infectious disease, cancer and other life-threatening conditions, announced today that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has given the Company a Notice of Allowance for U.S. Patent Application No. 12/282152 entitled “Extracorporeal Removal of Microvesicular Particles.” The patent grants Aethlon the exclusive right to remove immune suppressive microvesicular particles, which include but are not limited to exosomes, from the circulation of treated patients. The patent describes a method to bind and capture immune suppressive microvesicular particles from blood with a medical filtration device containing single or multiple affinity agents, which can include antibodies, aptamers, beads, lectins, proteins, or other compounds that adhere to microvesicles. The USPTO further notified the Company that it has calculated a Patent Term Adjustment of 452 days on the Notice of Allowance.
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“This patent allowance provides a cornerstone that reinforces our opportunity to establish a dominant market position in the therapeutic targeting of immunosuppressive exosomes,” stated Jim Joyce, Chairman and CEO at Aethlon Medical. The Aethlon Hemopurifier®, which is a first-in-class device being advanced in Hepatitis C care, has demonstrated the ability to capture a broad-spectrum of immune suppressive exosomes underlying cancer. A therapy that could inhibit exosome proliferation would fulfill a major unmet medical need as corresponding drug therapies have yet to emerge.
In cancer, exosomes have recently emerged to become a vital therapeutic target as they play an instrumental role in promoting tumor progression by inducing programmed cell death of anti-cancer immune cells. As a result of inhibiting the immune response, exosomes increase the proliferation and spread of many forms of cancer. The particles also seed the spread of tumor metastasis, promote angiogenesis (essential for tumor survival and growth), increase tumor aggressiveness, and contribute to anti-cancer drug resistance.
Circulating microvesicles or exosomes have also been discovered to have immunosuppressive roles in infectious disease and may accelerate the pathogenesis of other disease conditions as they have been reported to induce or amplify inflammatory and pathological conditions including, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, neurodegenerative disorders, diabetes, and rheumatic diseases. Beyond its cancer and infectious disease treatment initiatives, Aethlon is studying the deleterious role of exosomes in sepsis through a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
In addition to being known as exosomes, microvesicles have been referred to as epididimosomes, argosomes, exosome-like vesicles, microparticles, promininosomes, prostasomes, dexosomes, texosomes, dex, tex, archeosomes and oncosomes.
About Aethlon Medical
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 DARPA that would reduce the incidence of sepsis in combat-injured soldiers and civilians. For more information, please visit www.aethlonmedical.com.
Certain statements herein may be forward-looking and involve risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements involve assumptions, known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Aethlon Medical, Inc. to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Such potential risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, that the FDA will not approve the initiation of the Company’s clinical programs or provide market clearance of the company’s products, future human studies of the Aethlon ADAPT system or the Aethlon Hemopurifier® as an adjunct therapy to improve patient responsiveness to established cancer therapies or as a standalone cancer therapy, the Company’s ability to raise capital when needed, the Company’s ability to complete the development of its planned products, the Company’s ability to manufacture its products either internally or through outside companies and provide its services, the impact of government regulations, patent protection on the Company’s proprietary technology, product liability exposure, uncertainty of market acceptance, competition, technological change, and other risk factors. In such instances, actual results could differ materially as a result of a variety of factors, including the risks associated with the effect of changing economic conditions and other risk factors detailed in the Company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
Contacts:
James A. Joyce
Chairman and CEO
858.459.7800 x301
jj@aethlonmedical.com
Jim Frakes
Chief Financial Officer
858.459.7800 x300
jfrakes@aethlonmedical.com
Marc Robins
877.276.2467
mr@aethlonmedical.com
SOURCE Aethlon Medical, Inc.
