Aethlon Medical, Inc. (Nasdaq: AEMD), a medical therapeutic company focused on developing products to diagnose and treat cancer and life threatening infectious diseases, today announced the publication of a peer-reviewed journal article in PLOS ONE. The article, titled “Removal of Clinically Relevant SARS-CoV-2 Variants by An Affinity Resin Containing Galanthus nivalis Agglutinin,” contains data demonstrating that the proprietary GNA affinity resin of the Aethlon Hemopurifier® efficiently captures seven clinically relevant variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. Viral capture efficiency ranged from 53% to 89% for the variants tested.
“These data demonstrate that the Hemopurifier can effectively capture a wide range of clinically relevant SARS-CoV-2 variants,” said Charles J. Fisher, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Aethlon Medical. “As new variants and subvariants of this virus continue to emerge and induce new waves of the pandemic, health systems need innovative technologies that are agnostic to viral variations. The Hemopurifier may represent an opportunity to overcome this challenge and provide treatment to patients with severe COVID-19.”
The Aethlon Hemopurifier, a clinical stage product candidate, is a therapeutic blood filtration system that has been demonstrated to bind and remove life-threatening viruses and harmful exosomes from blood. Aethlon currently is evaluating the safety and feasibility of the Hemopurifier in an active Early Feasibility Study (EFS), analogous to a Phase 1 clinical trial for a drug or biologic, which is designed to enroll up to 40 severe COVID-19 patients [NCT04595903]. The first patient in the study completed Hemopurifier treatment in the trial and nine hospitals are actively screening patients. Aethlon recently announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted a protocol amendment to the study, notably eliminating the requirement of previous dialysis treatment, which will potentially enable accelerated enrollment in the ongoing study.
The newly published article can be found here.