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Biotech / Medical : GUMM - Eliminate the Common Cold -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike M who wrote (117)	1/31/1999 12:21:00 PM
From: DanZ	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5582

Mike, I do not have specific knowledge that Zicam contains any of Gum Tech gums. I based this on some research that I did at gumtech.com, zicam.com, and other research references that I posted earlier. Gum Tech's website says that gums are used in pharmaceutical products to: Control viscosities in syrups and lotions Particulate suspension Binding and tableting agent Control solubility Control rate of disintegration From zicam.com, tab "How Zicam Works"... "ZICAM actually penetrates the mucus and forms a barrier between the cold virus and the body. Here's how it happens. ZICAM has the ability to mimic the nasal cell ICAM. This property allows ZICAM to actually bind and plug the viral ICAM attachment sites. By binding to the viral sites, ZICAM INHIBITS the virus FROM continuing to invade the body. Zicam also enters the nasal cells and inhibits the virus from replicating." My research of peer related articles reveals the following: "Some new medications are based on the structure of the ICAM receptor and they stick to the "canyon" receptors on the virus and prevent it from attaching to ICAM receptor on the nasal cells. This method of preventing the virus from entering the cell works well in the test tube where the concentration of medication can be maintained but does not work very well in the nose where the ICAM medication is rapidly cleared from the nose. In the future a sustained release formulation of the ICAM medication may be effective." Source: cf.ac.uk Putting two and two together, I postulated that Zicam uses one of Gum Tech's gums to allow the "sustained release" of product. I was also searching for reasons why GUMM would be involved with Zicam and this is the rationale that I came up with. GUMM also specializes in helping customers formulate products and the GUMM press release said that researchers from Gum Tech and Gel Tech collaborated for 18 months. I plan to call IR tomorrow to try to verify if Zicam contains a Gum Tech gum. By the way, I just visited zicam.com again and if I'm not mistaken, they added some text to the "Science of Zicam" tab. I think the company was taken off guard because the news leaked before they were ready to take it public and now they are scrambling as quickly as possible to make information available so things don't get out of hand.