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Biotech / Medical : Cistron Biotechnology(CIST)$.30 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: scaram(o)uche who wrote (1177)	6/12/1998 9:51:00 AM
From: Steve Harmon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2742

The open-ended deal with Bluestone Capital is killing shareholder value. They want those remaining warrants priced as low as possible.

To: scaram(o)uche who wrote (1177)	6/12/1998 12:07:00 PM
From: Rudy Saucillo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2742

<<Gawd knows, there's some equally compelling rationale. There must be!>> Rick, I think you're right on the money. It doesn't take a year and a half - the time since the IMNX settlement - to bring in new projects and increase shareholder value. Trading at 1/3 book value now is obscene. There must be some reason why nothing has happened. Yup, I recall when IMNR and numerous other opportunities were raised on this board. The IMNR/AGPH partnership announcement was interesting in that, with the VaxGen news, we may be seeing the beginning of a new focus on AIDS vaccines. A quick Medline shows that there has been some research in the use of IL-1b as an adjuvant in AIDS immunotherapies: Microbiol Immunol 1997;41(12):965-974 Bioactive fragment of human IL-1beta [163-171] modulates the immune response to synthetic peptides of HIV. Gokulan K, Rao DN Department of Biochemistry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. The activation of T helper cells specific for viral antigens is critical for antibody production and the generation of cytotoxic T cells during retroviral infection. In this study, we examined the effect of linking HIV peptides with a bioactive fragment of human interleukin-1beta (IL-1beta) (163-171) on the induction of immune response to the peptides. A panel of highly purified synthetic peptides representing defined regions of gp41, Gag and gp120 were used as antigens. Mouse spleen cells primed with the peptide conjugates produced greater proliferation on in vitro stimulation than spleen cells primed with peptide alone. In addition, antibody production as assessed by ELISA was observed after immunization with conjugated peptides but not with peptide alone, indicating B-cell activation. We also found that a high level of IgG2a antibody production correlated with a high level of IFN-gamma production. These findings favor the notion that IL-1beta plays an important role in immune responses. These observations support the formulation and design of synthetic vaccines against HIV using synthetic HIV peptides conjugated with immunomodulators. Such an approach may provide an effective vaccination against other infectious agents. Rudy