Company focuses on host immune response, not the virus.

2003 AUG 6 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- GenoMed, Inc., (MED), a St. Louis, Missouri-based company, reaffirmed its approach to deadly viruses such as SARS, West Nile virus, and HIV.

Dr. David Moskowitz, GenoMed's chairman and chief medical officer, said, "Most epidemiologists think SARS will come back later this year. Some say SARS could be as bad as the influenza pandemic of 1918.

"The problem is that it will be at least a decade before anyone has a vaccine or a safe drug to use against the virus. Quarantining the world until then doesn't make much sense to me."

Moskowitz continued, "Although unconventional, our approach is practical in that it is ready now, it's safe, and it's easily testable. We've taken a close look at the pathology of SARS, as well as West Nile virus. Like SARS, the West Nile virus has already been killing people, and it will be a long time before we have a vaccine or an effective antiviral drug. In both diseases, the people who have died have had an exaggerated immune response to the virus. This runs counter to conventional wisdom, which holds that the elderly victims of SARS and West Nile virus are immunosuppressed."

He continued: "We would say instead that the elderly victims of these viruses were immuno-imbalanced, and that the suppressor arm of their immune response was under-active. They didn't die of too little immune activity, but of too much. This is an unconventional view of geriatric immunology."

He added, "To add to our unorthodoxy, we've discovered that blocking angiotensin II can gently suppress the immune response. It must be a safe way to suppress the immune ...