Aethlon Medical, Inc. (AEMD)

Aethlon Medical, Inc. (AEMD) creates medical devices geared toward meeting unmet medical needs in cancer, infectious disease, and other life-threatening diseases such as Ebola. Among other technologies in the company's product pipeline is the Aethlon Hemopurifier®. Named by Time Magazine as one of the best 25 inventions of 2014, the first-in-class bio-filtration device is designed to literally filter viruses and toxins from the blood of infected individuals.

So far the device has been used for the treatment of HIV, Hepatitis C and Ebola. In human studies the Hemopurifier® safely provided average viral load reductions of more than 50% during four-hour treatment periods in both HCV and HIV infected individuals without the administration of antiviral drugs. In vitro studies have also documented that the Hemopurifier captures exosomes underlying cancer, including colorectal, lymphoma, melanoma, ovarian, and breast cancer.

Earlier this year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved testing of the device on an Ebola patient in Germany with multiple organ failure; the testing was a success and the patient later recovered. To read Time's coverage of the incident, visit: http://time.com/3586271/ebola-treatment-dialysis-blood/. The FDA's approval allows for Aethlon to conduct Ebola studies in up to 20 infected subjects in the United States.

In late February, Aethlon reported that the first patient enrolled in its FDA-approved feasibility study completed the full Hemopurifier treatment protocol without any device-related adverse effects. The study is being administered in Houston to 10 chronic dialysis patients infected with Hepatitis C. Overseas, the Hemopurifier is being tested in India for its efficacy to speed-up viral load depletion when used in combination with hepatitis C standard-of-care drug therapy. Aethlon has reported that of the 10 patients that completed the full treatment protocol, five achieved a rapid virologic response (RVR), which represents the clinical endpoint that best predicts sustained virologic response (SVR) cure rates in patients who are unable to tolerate normally administered doses of antiviral drugs or pegiterferon+ribavirin (PR) therapy.