The Twelfth Annual World AIDS Day Takes Place...and Yet Not Even One Patient With AIDS Cured So Far. Not Even One
LAS VEGAS--(BW HealthWire)--Dec. 1, 1999--(OTC BB:STGI) Today is dedicated to AIDS, the worst scourge in the history of mankind, worse even than the black plague, five hundred years ago. There will be conferences, meetings, and manifestations in almost all countries of the world.
At the United Nations, a conference dedicated to AIDS will take place today, with the participation of the most prestigious scientists and world leaders in this field. And what will they report? At the present time, there are 33.8 million people living with AIDS/HIV, with 16.3 million dead already, and 5.3 million new cases in 1999 alone, with 16,000 newly infected people every day; and yet, since its discovery in 1983, not even one patient with AIDS has ever been cured. NOT EVEN ONE: in spite of a multitude of new and sophisticated treatments. Now scientists are saying that it would take 60 (sixty) years of treatment to rid the body of AIDS.
Faced with this situation, scores of top AIDS scientists all over the world believe that the either something is wrong with the treatments, or something is missing.
We believe, based upon many reports published in the medical press, that something is missing...namely the inability of ALL treatments so far, to penetrate or go after the virus, hiding undisturbed for many years in certain T-cells. While most treatments are able to kill or reduce the virus existing in the blood, none of them can go after the virus hiding mostly in the immune cells. There, the virus can stay alive even during the most powerful treatment or cocktails, even if the patient follows faithfully the treatment for months and years. At the right time, the virus will come out, re-infecting the body.
As such, it seems that the ultimate and potentially successful battle against HIV, will be carried out deep inside the immune cells hosting the virus, with drugs capable of penetrating the cell and engaging and neutralizing the virus. These drugs exist already, or are in the pipeline, and they are called anticortisols or steroidogenesis inhibitor drugs.
The first indication that a drug with anticortisol capabilities might counteract the HIV was published in 1989 by Cloyd et al. In the prestigious Virology, 173:581-590. Cloyd et al. reported unexpected effects on virus by using DILANTIN, a drug approved in the treatment of epilepsy, but having anticortisol capability. After using it in certain cultures of immune cells, they noticed that the drug inhibits the HIV infection of certain immune cells, without ever understanding the mechanisms by which this action took place.
The potential explanation of this mechanism came six years later when another drug, RU-486, with anticortisol activity was used, as reported in an article by Weiner, Levi, and Rafaeli, from the Dept. of Pathology, University of Pennsylvania, in the prestigious Proceedings of the Academy of Science, 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, 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 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.
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 antiretrovirals, protease inhibitors and others (called collectively "the Cocktails"), that offered hope that the AIDS would be controlled, perhaps even cured. It did not happen that way.
Steroidogenesis Inhibitors (STGI) believes there is a solution. 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 the Steroidogenesis Inhibitors' drug, ANTICORT(TM), an anticortisol drug developed by A.T. Sapse, MD, Steroidogenesis Inhibitors International's (STGI's) President. ANTICORT(TM) 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, a fully reporting company, 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
or
Performance Strategies, Inc.
Richard L. Brown / Chuck Jordan, 303/948-3601
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