SANTA FE, N.M., Feb. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CytoDyn, Inc. has reached out to Dr. Jacob Lalezari at Quest Clinical Research in San Francisco for a Principal Investigator to conduct the Company’s next clinical trial of Cytolin(R), a targeted immune therapy for treating HIV/AIDS.
According to CytoDyn, Cytolin(R) is the first targeted immune therapy for HIV/AIDS that was shown to significantly reduce viral burden in preliminary human studies. The potential advantage is that Cytolin(R) exerts its effect on the immune system and not the virus. As a result, a species of virus resistant to the effects of Cytolin(R) cannot emerge through natural selection because the drug has no effects on the virus itself. In addition to providing an additional treatment for the disease, Cytolin(R) might extend the useful life of the antiretroviral drugs currently used to treat HIV/AIDS, such as Emtriva(R) and Truvada(R) manufactured by Gilead, Epzicom(R) and Lexiva(R) manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, and Reyataz(R) and Zerit(R) manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb to name a few.
Dr. Lalezari served as Principal Investigator on clinical trials conducted for Merck, Bayer, Pfizer, and Roche, to name a few. Dr. Lalezari has served as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California in San Francisco, and as Co-director of the HIV Clinical Research Center at Mt. Zion Medical Center. He is an author of many papers on HIV/AIDS that have been published in peer-review journals, including Annals of Internal Medicine and the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Lalezari told a reporter from the Albuquerque Journal that he is “excited” by a “glimmer of hope” that Cytolin(R) might fulfill a “desperate need” for a salvage drug to rescue patients who are infected with multidrug resistant species of HIV. In other reports, Dr. Lalezari stated, “Cytolin(R) is the first immune therapy I’ve seen that has produced a significant reduction in viral burden in preliminary clinical trials. Previous attempts to develop an immune therapy for HIV disease have failed in this regard, leaving the treating physician without an immune-based drug for treating HIV/AIDS. I became interested in this project because of its potential for making a new class of drugs available for those living with AIDS.”
According to CytoDyn’s CEO, Allen D. Allen, Dr. Lalezari’s facility is relatively expensive. “However, clinical trials are the one place where a Company should not try to pinch pennies,” Allen said. “It is not unusual for an emerging biotech company to have to repeat a clinical trial because it was not conducted with the required scientific rigor the first time.”
About CytoDyn, Inc.
CytoDyn is developing a family of targeted immune therapies for treating HIV/AIDS. Although targeted immune therapies are now a mainstream approach to treating cancer and autoimmune diseases, earlier efforts to develop an immune-based therapy for HIV/AIDS failed to show a significant reduction in viral burden. But in a small Phase II(a) study of the Company’s first product, Cytolin, patients responded with a marked drop in viral burden, as reported by Donald W. Northfelt, MD, F.A.C.P. at the 12th Conference on Retroviruses and Infectious Diseases held last February in Boston, MA.
The Company’s family of targeted immune therapies is based on a discovery made in the early 1990s by CytoDyn CEO Allen D. Allen, Joyce Zarling at the Seattle Primate Center, and Leonard Adelman at the University of Southern California, all working independently. HIV is an acronym for “Human Immunodeficiency Virus.” The word “Human” is used to describe the virus because it does not cause disease in the other mammals it can infect. If the virus caused disease in the other mammals it can infect, then it would be called the “Mammalian Immunodeficiency Virus.” Allen, et al discovered why only humans get sick when infected by HIV. This new knowledge paved the way for a scientific approach to developing an immune therapy for HIV/AIDS. For more information visit our web site at www.cytodyn.com
Contact: Corinne Allen
505-988-5520
CytoDyn, Inc.
CONTACT: Corinne Allen of CytoDyn, Inc., +1-505-988-5520
Web site: http://www.cytodyn.com/
