Aethlon Medical, a San Diego-based biotech company, may have found a promising new therapeutic treatment for COVID-19 through a hemopurifier device. NBC 7’s Amber Frias has the latest.
Scientists at Aethlon Medical, a San Diego-based biotech company, may have found a promising new therapeutic treatment for COVID-19.
“What we do is capture the virus and completely remove it from circulation, never to return, and nobody else does that,” said Charles Fisher, MD, chief executive officer at Aethlon Medical Inc.
Through a device called a hemopurifier, which looks a little bit like a dialysis cartridge, Fisher says they are able to filter out the coronavirus from an infected patient’s blood.
“We have these very small pores in the fiber so the blood just goes straight through like in dialysis,” said Fisher. “Small things like viral particles and exosomes they come in and stick in cartridges and are removed from the circulation.”
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Study results published last week show how the device worked on two severely ill COVID-19 patients. One patient, a 59-year-old woman, was able to fully recover after eight rounds of treatment.
“We circulated her for six hours at a time for a total of eight days,” said Fisher. “Her chart said she would die within six hours when we started and she ultimately left the hospital and went home.”
The other, a 67-year-old man, who died due to organ failure, had more than half of the virus in his body cut through one single round of treatment.
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“Would we have had a chance to treat him for a few days, I think we could've had a chance to turn that around,” said Fisher.
While the report has not yet been reviewed by the scientific community, early results that were posted on Reddit and other social media platforms caused the company's stock to surge.
“Nobody has ever demonstrated they can remove COVID-19 from the body, we did that,” said Fisher. “Nobody has ever demonstrated they can remove exosomes in a therapeutic fashion from the body, we did that. Things like that give people a different look at the ways we can approach these diseases.”
A new approach to beat COVID-19.
