Steroidogenesis Says The Ultimate Battle Against HIV/AIDS Will be Fought Inside the Immune Cells
LAS VEGAS--(BW Healthwire)--Nov. 17, 1999--Steroidogenesis (OTCBB:STGI) says a recent article (November 12, 1999) by Haase et al, published in the prestigious SCIENCE in London, brings out pertinent news about the limitations of the current AIDS therapy.
This article documents that the present anti-viral therapy (retrovirals, protease inhibitors and others) and even the future therapy, namely the much-hoped-for vaccines, if and when developed, would reach and kill, at best, the circulating AIDS virus in the blood. However, according to the article, they cannot reach the one hiding inside certain T-immune cells, where it can stay undisturbed for many years, just waiting to come out and start again its destructive action. From this important article, it looks like the ultimate fight against the HIV will take place down in the trenches, deep inside the immune cells.
Now let's go back a few years ago, with the publication of an article by Weiner, Levi, and Rafaeli, from the Dept. of Pathology, University of Pennsylvania in the prestigious Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences, Vol. 92, pp. 3621-3625, April 1995. The Weiner, et al article describes a dramatic story that is taking place inside certain immune cells infected by the HIV virus. It seems that one of the HIV genes, the Vpr gene (a real viper), once inside the infected immune cell, is looking for ways to build a local spearhead, to penetrate or pierce the immune cell nucleus, in order to transform it into a virus factory. For this purpose, the gene collects, or practically pirates, the cortisol found in the cell. It then remolds it, figuratively speaking, in the spearhead that helps the virus invade the immune cell nucleus where the virus factory is set up and working full-time. Having understood this process, Dr. Weiner's team sought to block the cortisol in the cell, thus, depriving the Vpr gene of using it. As such, they added in the experiment, an anti-cortisol drug, RU-486, since they reasoned that by immobilizing the existing cellular cortisol, it should deprive the Vpr gene of this essential ingredient.
According to Steroidogenesis (STGI), the results were immediate and astonishing. Not only was the virus stopped, but even the already infected cells lost 70% of their capacity of manufacturing the virus.
More significantly, Weiner, et al suggested in their article, the need of developing anticortisol/antiglucocorticoid drugs to join the anti-AIDS therapy.
At that time, this important discovery was practically obscured by the euphoria surrounding the introduction of new anti retrovirals, protease inhibitors and others (called collectively "the Cocktails"), that offered hope that the AIDS virus would be controlled, perhaps even cured. It did not happen that way.
Today, when it is clear that the final battle against the HIV should be carried out against the virus inside the immune cell, it is noteworthy to mention Steroidogenesis Inhibitors' drug, ANTICORT(TM), an anticortisol drug developed by A.T. Sapse, MD, STGI's President, that is presently being clinically tested under FDA Regulations, in the treatment of the immune deficiency in an adult HIV population in the US, and in a children HIV+ population in Romania. STGI believes, and hopes, that in the not-to-distant future, ANTICORT(TM) will prove to be not only an immune booster in HIV/AIDS populations, but also capable of fighting the HIV itself, deep inside the immune cells, thus taking an important place in the armamentarium of the anti-HIV therapy. For more information about cortisol and the Vpr gene, STGI suggests the article titled The Cortisol Connection, in Science News, Vol. 152, No. 22, Nov. 29, 1997.
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STGI is pursuing the worldwide development and distribution of its drug, ANTICORT(TM), which is currently in the clinical trial process as an anticortisol, steroidogenesis inhibitor drug for the treatment of immune deficiency in AIDS/HIV+. Satellite open clinical trials are also projected in the treatment of other diseases such as certain symptoms of aging, cancer and depression, all of which are high cortisol conditions.
CONTACT: Steroidogenesis
Janet Greeson, Ph.D., 702/222-1988 |
