Re:A Town for People with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
by DrAwdeOccarim on Tuesday September 03, 2019 @09:22PM
(#20873116)
What an interesting rabbit hole this took me down. So it looks like Ampligen is "Poly I: Poly C12U is designated by the molecular formula, [rI(13):rC(12)rU(1)]n where: n = 46–138", which has now been improved to longer dsRNAs with additional U (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8722874).
They should try formulating it in a lipid nanoparticle. I bet they'd get some really interesting PK/PD.
So the drug turns on RNase L, which basically shreds all RNA in the cell. It's a kill switch for the cell. Kind of like the last ditch effort to stop a viral infection. What's interesting about this drug is that doesn't turn on TLR3 really well because of the U:I mis-matches so it looks like only some cells turn on RNase L. I don't really get that part.
The other part if they see increased in NK cells but not Tregs. Again, some cell (maybe APC?) is taking up the oligos from the blood and activating things a little bit, but not enough? That may explain why the clinical results for CFS (for example) were so hit or miss: the clearance kinetics of this type of drug is going to vary wildly from patient to patient.
Another weird thing I noticed is that today, the company changed their name to AIM ImmunoTech and just got a twitter account (https://twitter.com/AIMImmuno). Seems like it's tied to the New Yorker article coming out.
The most interesting thing I've come across is that they dosed it as naked RNA by IV and it is rapidly cleared (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1974294).
They should try formulating it in a lipid nanoparticle. I bet they'd get some really interesting PK/PD.
So the drug turns on RNase L, which basically shreds all RNA in the cell. It's a kill switch for the cell. Kind of like the last ditch effort to stop a viral infection. What's interesting about this drug is that doesn't turn on TLR3 really well because of the U:I mis-matches so it looks like only some cells turn on RNase L. I don't really get that part.
The other part if they see increased in NK cells but not Tregs. Again, some cell (maybe APC?) is taking up the oligos from the blood and activating things a little bit, but not enough? That may explain why the clinical results for CFS (for example) were so hit or miss: the clearance kinetics of this type of drug is going to vary wildly from patient to patient.
Another weird thing I noticed is that today, the company changed their name to AIM ImmunoTech and just got a twitter account (https://twitter.com/AIMImmuno). Seems like it's tied to the New Yorker article coming out.