Marburg Surveillance Project Thread II

Several promising aspects about TARVACIN’s potential as an ANTI-VIRAL (and even Anti-Cancer) treatment (ALL THESE THINGS REMAIN TO BE PROVEN IN HUMAN TRIALS):

IT APPEARS TO BE UNIVERSAL:
Bernard Wolfson in his 7-16-05 O.C.R. “High Hopes” article said, “What if someone told you they had a drug that could fight Cancer and nearly every human Virus from HIV to Hepatitis C, and from Ebola to the common flu? You might be a little surprised, a little curious, a little excited - and more than a little incredulous… The reason Tarvacin appears to have such a broad range of uses is that it targets not any specific cancer or virus, but rather a substance found in the membranes of all cells. When cells become malignant, or are infected by a virus, the substance - known as a phospholipid - moves from the inside of the membrane to the outer surface, allowing Tarvacin to bind with it. The binding marks the cell, raising a red flag that alerts the immune system to the presence of a foreign body. With viral infections, the body's white blood cells attack the viruses. With cancer, the immune system appears to destroy the blood vessels of a tumor, depriving it of the nutrients it needs to grow. ‘The concept is almost so simple it's hard to believe no one picked up on it before,’ says Steven King, Peregrine’s CEO Peregrine.” [http://tinyurl.com/9e6gf ]
###This from Thorpe’s patent app #20040161429 (filed 8-15-03, pub. USPO 8-19-04), titled ‘Compositions for treating Viral Infections using Immunoconjugates to Aminophospholipid’: [0909] “the spectrum of viral treatment for the present invention extends to any virus, whether enveloped or not, DNA or RNA. …the invention is not limited to the treatment of enveloped viruses alone, nor to any particular virus, which is an important advantage. [1302] “the 3G4 antibody has enormous potential as a broad spectrum anti-viral agent.” [ http://tinyurl.com/6pdny ]
###CEO King 6-15-05, “....Examples of enveloped viruses include Marburg virus, Lassa fever, Ebola, HIV, Hepatitis C, Influenza [incl. Avian]. Secondly, as I'll show you later in some preclinical data, Tarvacin has shown the ability to arrest the development of disease even in late stages of infection. And thirdly, Tarvacin is expected to recognize not just the known enveloped viruses that are here today, but new enveloped viruses that will undoubtedly become available and will have mutated and become new viral strains over the next years to come."
[ http://tinyurl.com/coomw & http://tinyurl.com/e2hxh ]
###Michael Brush’s 7-28-05 “Envelope Please” article, “Most of the excitement right now surrounds potential treatments of the so-called “envelope” viruses – the ones that envelope themselves with bits the host cell membrane as they exit the host cell. The “envelope” viruses read like a top 10 list of diseases you’re most likely to get, and really don’t want. They range from Influenza and Hepatitis B and C, to Herpes, West Nile, Dengue, HIV, SARS, Avian flu and many of the potential bio-terror “hemorrhagic” viruses, like Ebola. [http://tinyurl.com/9z7yf ]

IT APPEARS TO BE SAFE:
From Thorpe video 10-24-04: “Understanding Tarvacin”, incl. his first-ever public comments about Tarvacin's ANTI-VIRAL capabilities: “That's an extraordinary result, I don't know of any other antiviral agent that is known to protect against Lassa Fever. And we've also shown similar results in cytomegalovirus... at that dose we've never seen any sign of toxicity in mice or monkeys; about 14 species treated with the therapeutic dose. And that's thousands of mice & monkeys. And even if you increase the dose to 10 mg/kg, that's 10x the therapeutic dose. So the conclusions with Tarvacin are that it has a unique mechanism of action, there's nothing else like it out there.”
[http://tinyurl.com/8b6kr & http://tinyurl.com/dou8t ]
###From Thorpe’s APT (AntiPS/3G4/Tarvacin) patent app #20040161429 (pub. USPO 8-19-04):
[1298] “The 3G4 antibody has also been administered to monkeys in safety studies and no side effects have been observed.” [http://tinyurl.com/6pdny ]
###From Thorpe’s Aug03-Jan08 $1.68mm NIH/NIAID grant for research using 3G4 as ‘Novel Anti-Viral Agents for Treating Lassa Fever’, “the phospholipids that they recognize have the same structure and cellular distribution in different mammalian species, simplifying the transition from experimental animals into humans. The antibodies arenot toxic to mice, even when administered in high doses for prolonged periods of time.” [http://tinyurl.com/5ntcm ]

IT APPEARS VIRUSES CAN’T BECOME RESISTANT TO IT:
Again, from the Brush article, “A great thing about Peregrine’s approach is that viruses can’t mutate to fight off the Tarvacin attack. That’s because Tarvacin keys in on anomalies in the cell membrane – the confused phospholipids -- that viruses don’t know how to fix. ‘Since it is not made by the virus, it is not mutable by the virus,’ says Peregrine CEO Steven King. ‘It is not something the virus can change, to get away from therapy.’” [http://tinyurl.com/9z7yf ]
###From the Wolfson article, “Scientists say Tarvacin could have an advantage over other anti-viral drugs because viruses probably won't be able to evade it by mutating. ‘Mutation won't affect it because it's targeting a substance which is not intrinsic to the virus itself but to the host cell - so that substance will be there no matter what new form the virus takes,’ says Dr. Stephen M. Smith, a paid Peregrine consultant and chief of infectious diseases at the Seton Hall School of Graduate Medical Education in Orange, NJ.” [http://tinyurl.com/9e6gf ]
###CEO King 6-15-05, “Tarvacin recognizes a stable target common to all enveloped viruses that cannot easily be mutated because it is derived from the host, it's not encoded by the genome, but rather it's a stable structure of the virus particle.”
[ http://tinyurl.com/coomw & http://tinyurl.com/e2hxh ]

IT MAY EVEN CONFER VIRAL IMMUNITY:
From Tarvacin.com, “Tarvacin provided significant protection in animals administered lethal viral loads of pichinde virus (a model of Lassa fever) with 50% of the Tarvacin treated animals surviving and none of the animals receiving control treatment surviving. Moreover, Tarvacin treated guinea pigs who survived the infection became immune to subsequent infections with the same viral strain. An interesting hypothesis still to be tested is whether treatment of one virus with APT agents confers protection against infection by other enveloped viruses. [http://tinyurl.com/cvfcm ]
###From BIO2005, “Animals lethally infected with Pichinde virus that survived following Tarvacin therapy had long term immunity to reinfection.” [http://tinyurl.com/dqf9t]

= = = = = = =
Remember, Tarvacin initiated a Ph1 Trial against HEP-C 8-8-2005:

8-8-05: HEP-C Trial Inititates at Bach and Godofsky Infectious Diseases, Bradenton FL:
"This phase I study is an open-label, dose-escalation study in up to 32 adult patients with chronic Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection who either no longer respond to or failed standard therapy with pegylated interferon and ribavirin combination therapy... The study is being conducted at Bach and Godofsky Infectious Diseases, the largest private infectious disease practice specializing in the treatment of viral hepatitis in the USA."
http://ir.peregrineinc.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74236&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=740477
Bach & Godofsky Infectious Diseases in Bradenton, FL
Principle Investigator: Dr. Eliot W. Godofsky
Announcement 8-8-05: http://tinyurl.com/cltum
Tarvacin Trials website: http://www.tarvacin.com
Gov't info: http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/show/NCT00128271
***Tarvacin HEP-C Trial Contacts:
Peregrine: 800-694-5334, clinicalaffairs@peregrineinc.com
Contact Bach & Godofsky directly: 941-746-2711 x39

To learn more about Thorpe & Tarvacin:
http://tinyurl.com/b9hdq - my amateur compilation of Articles, Quotes, Patents, History, etc.

http://www.thedailyjournalonline.com/article.asp?ArticleId=201829&CategoryId=12395

Official: patient in isolation in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD – A patient has been put into isolation in quake-hit Pakistan after falling ill with a suspected case of hemorrhagic fever, an aid official said Wednesday. “It’s still a suspected case. It’s not a confirmed case,” said Krist Teirlinck, a coordinator of emergency operations for the aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders.
The patient has been put in an isolation tent on the grounds of the destroyed district hospital in the quake-devastated town of Bagh, in case the fever is contagious.
He would give no details about the patient or symptoms. He also said it was unclear if the earthquake had played any role in the illness. He said, however, he believed the fever was transmitted to humans by ticks. Hemorrhagic fevers, which include such illnesses as Ebola and Marburg, are characterized by a sudden onset, fever, aching, bleeding in internal organs and shock. AP

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/11/08/angola.virus.ap/index.html

"LUANDA, Angola (AP) -- Angola says it has stamped out an epidemic of the Marburg virus that killed 227 people in the world's worst recorded outbreak of the Ebola-like fever.

The Health Ministry and World Health Organization said in a joint statement late Monday they recorded the last Marburg case July 27. WHO considers outbreaks to be contained when there have been no new infections for a period lasting double the virus' maximum incubation time of 21 days.

"After more than 45 days of no new cases, we can say we recommend that the epidemic be declared over," WHO regional official Fatumata Diallo told reporters in Luanda, the capital."

Thank you very much for the ping.

I'll always wonder how many really died, and how Angola really managed this.

I guess I'll never know...God rest their souls.

Some progress on the reservoir front?

Bats fingered for Ebola deaths
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/02/ebola_bats/

"Team member Eric Leroy told Nature: "We find evidence
of asymptomatic infection by Ebola virus in three species
of fruit bat, indicating that these animals may be acting
as a reservoir for this deadly virus.""

Ebola and Marburg are very similar...they even LOOK similar...