investors about the company and its technology. In a webcast presentation Wednesday, Joyce said that Ebola represents the ultimate challenge for the company’s bio-filtration technology. The strain responsible for the outbreak in West Africa has been killing more than half of those it infects. One factor that makes it so deadly is that Ebola replicates very rapidly in the body, overwhelming the immune system and causing organ failure.
“There are a lot of pathogens that aren’t addressed by drugs or vaccines,” Joyce told me by phone earlier this week.
Aethlon’s Hemopurifier takes a different approach—by reducing the viral load and giving the immune system a chance to mount a response. Joyce told me in a 2012 interview that Aethlon’s technology could have a substantial impact in reducing the viral load in patients who are critically ill with HIV and Hepatitis C infections. But he added that the response from the medical community was not very encouraging.
While there might be a temporary benefit from bio-filtration therapy, many viral infections are persistent, and skeptical scientists expected HIV and Hepatitis C would come roaring back following the therapy.
Nevertheless, Joyce kept trying to advance Aethlon’s technology. He said the filtration therapy has now been “successfully administered” in about 100 cases of health-compromised patients with HIV and Hepatitis C infections at four hospitals in India.
The Aethlon CEO said the company is awaiting FDA approval of its request for an Investigational Device Exemption that would enable Aethlon to collect safety data in the United States on the Hemopurifier as a broad-spectrum countermeasure against pandemic threats, including Ebola and chronic viral pathogens such as HIV and Hepatitis C.
The company also has received grants from the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to test the Hemopurifier on wounded soldiers at risk for sepsis.
Joyce says the device also could be used to help treat cancer, but it has been difficult to raise sufficient funding. “Most of the funding has come from angel investors,” and Aethlon “has been trying to transition to institutional investors,” Joyce said.
While Aethlon is a public company, its shares have been trading on the over the counter market (under the ticker symbol AEMD) in recent days for about 27 cent a share. The company’s market cap is only about $81 million, and Joyce said during the webcast the company’s burn rate has been about $220,000 a month.
“As a [medical] device you move under the radar because people tend to believe that drugs and vaccine therapies are more efficacious,” Joyce told me. Yet he remains confident that Aethlon’s Hemopurifier can eventually prove itself. The Ebola outbreak, he said, is only “an opportunity for us in the sense that it gave us another area to apply our technology.”
