State College, PA-- February 3, 1998 -- SpectruMedix Corporation (OTC:SMDX) jointly with The University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at San Francisco announced today in Chicago at the 5th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, initial in vivo results of T cell proliferation rates in AIDS patients using isotope mass spectrometric techniques. The results are part of an ongoing collaboration designed to change the diagnosis and management of AIDS and to optimize its therapeutic approach by allowing physicians to rapidly measure the efficacy of a drug or treatment modality in an individual patient. This diagnostic technique may finally allow physicians to establish, based upon objective evidence, the proper time for an individual AIDS patient to begin taking medication and which medication is best suited for this particular individual. (A description of this new technique was published in the January 20, 1998 issue of The Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences: "Measurement of Cell Proliferation etc.". )
The results of this study indicate that the body's capacity to make new cells was in fact the key determinant of T cell counts and the patients' responses to protease inhibitor therapy in AIDS. T cells were indeed being destroyed with a higher degree of efficiency in AIDS patients than in healthy people without HIV infection, but more important is their body's capacity to form new cells.
"We at Berkeley/UCSF are very excited about the prospects for this technology ," stated Marc Hellerstein, M.D., Ph.D., the Principal Investigator of the study. "We are delighted to be working with SpectruMedix with the goal of commercializing this technique at the earliest time. We anticipate that potential beneficiaries will include AIDS, cancer, osteoporosis, heart patients and others."
"The implications of the technology's capability to quickly and accurately
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Contact: Bernard Sonnenschein
bernard@spectrumedix.com
814-867-8600
SpectruMedix Corporation
3-Feb-1998