Aphios
Awarded United States Patent for Vaccines
for HIV/AIDS, Influenza and Other Infectious Diseases
May
09, 2006 —
Aphios Corporation
today announced that it has been awarded United States P
atent No. 7,033, 813 for vaccines for AIDS, influenza and
other infectious diseases.
Vaccination is the most cost effective tool for the control
and prevention of infectious diseases. This could be true
for HIV/AIDS that is running rampant throughout the world
infecting more than 40 million people and killing 20 million
worldwide. Unfortunately, most attempts to develop a safe
and effective HIV/AIDS vaccine over the last two decades
have failed.
In Aphios’ vaccine technology, HIV virions are filled
with SuperFluids, which are critical, supercritical or near-critical
fluids with or without polar cosolvents. When compressed,
these fluids exhibit enhanced thermodynamic properties of
penetration, solvation and expansion. The overfilled virions
are then rapidly expanded and rupture at their weakest points.
The HIV virions are rendered non-infective while preserving
overall tertiary structure, protein integrity and antigenicity.
Viral proteins, in particular gp120 and nucleocapsid proteins,
are retained in their native and functional state. Viruses
are inactivated by a purely physical mechanism unlike traditional
methods that utilize chemicals that can cross-link and render
protein epitopes less effective. This technology is rapid,
inactivating more than 6 logs (one million virions per milliliter)
of most viruses in less than 20 seconds. Vaccine preparations
can include a combination of different HIV clades and strains
to generate the broadest immune response possible. The vaccine
manufacturing technology is scaleable, cost-effective and
broadly applicable to other viral pathogens such as hepatitis
and influenza.
Preparation is underway in the United States and abroad
to develop technologies and vaccines to avert a worldwide
flu pandemic should the H5N1 bird flu mutate into a form
that allows human-to-human transfer. Such a pandemic can
have serious consequences to human health with estimated
death tolls in the tens of millions.
Most of the influenza vaccines currently utilized are trivalent
vaccines consisting of two of the predominant influenza
A strains that were circulating during the prior years’
flu season and influenza B. These viral strains are typically
chemically inactivated, a process that cross-links protein
epitopes and adversely impacts the efficacy of viral antigens.
In these trivalent vaccines, residual chemicals have to
be removed to minimize adverse health effects. Current influenza
vaccines are about 70-90% effective in preventing illness
in healthy younger adults, 50-80% effective in preventing
influenza-related hospitalizations and death in the elderly,
and only 30-50% effective in preventing influenza-like illness
in frail elderly. By physically inactivating the influenza
virus utilizing SuperFluids CFI, an improved influenza vaccine
can be prepared for current circulating and potentially
pandemic strains of the influenza virus.
Aphios Corporation (www.aphios.com) is a biopharmaceutical
company that is developing enhanced therapeutics and biologics
for health maintenance, disease prevention and the treatment
of human diseases with a focus on infectious diseases, oncology
and quality-of-life medicines.
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