New Crowdfunding Campaign Seeks Cure for HIV Via Monoclonal Antibodies

Despite claiming the lives of 400 children and 3000 adults every 24 hours, HIV has not received the public attention or private investment that it deserves. Today, 60 percent of those infected with HIV have no treatment while the 40 percent who are treated are using ARVs that are both toxic and expensive. Via a new crowdfunding campaign, BioClonetics is committed to finding an accessible and affordable HIV cure. So far they have raised $212,485 from 400 investors.

"BioClonetics is finalizing the production and testing of a monoclonal antibody to treat patients with HIV. HIV is a virus that infects 37 million and kills approximately 1.2 million every year, and today there is still no cure. At BioClonetics, we've created a cell line that produces fully human monoclonal antibodies to specifically target and neutralize infectious diseases including HIV. If successful, this could be the first true cure for HIV at a fraction of the price of current treatment," said Charles Cotropia, Co-Founder & CEO, JD, BioClonetics Immunotherapeutics.

The current treatment for HIV is toxic and expensive. Antiretroviral chemotherapy (ARV) is currently used to suppress HIV symptoms, but requires lifelong treatment and can have major consequences.

In the U.S., the FDA has approved the use of ARVs as the main treatment for HIV patients. And though ARVs can improve a patient's health for decades, they are highly toxic. ARVs can cause severe damage to organs including the heart and kidneys, decrease bone-mineral density, and result in Vitamin D deficiency. ARVs treatment is also necessary for life and average cost of treatment is $14,000-$20,000 a year.

BioClonetics Immunotherapeutics says they have created an antibody that targets and neutralizes infectious diseases like HIV.

"At BioClonetics Immunotherapeutics, we're one step closer to ending the search for the HIV cure. We have discovered and developed a proprietary cell line that produces a fully-human antibody proven to specifically target and effectively neutralize HIV-1," said the company in a statement.

Their treatment, called Clone 3, is what's known as a monoclonal antibody -- a laboratory-made molecule produced by repeated replication of a single parent cell. Monoclonal antibodies mimic the ones your body naturally produces as part of your immune system's response to germs, viruses and other invaders. Because monoclonal antibodies come from a single cell source, they're engineered to target a specific part of a virus. The Clone 3 monoclonal antibodies that they're developing target a specific site on HIV.

So far, BioClonetics has laid the groundwork for a major breakthrough in the fight against HIV, and gained some incredible traction. They have had success isolating and cloning of the B cells of HIV patients to create monoclonal antibodies, screening of the resulting antibodies and the identification of Clone 3, and doing in-vitro testing of Clone 3 against HIV virus. They've also successfully identified the complete heavy chain and light chain amino acid structure of Clone 3.

"A major pharmaceutical company has indicated that it will further consider our technology once we have successfully completed the next step of producing and testing of what is known as the 'recombinant' form of Clone 3," said the company. "We have several world-class laboratories with whom we are working who will assist us in conducting the next steps of our plan."

In the next 3 months, BioClonetics will be producing the recombinant of the Clone 3 antibody for testing and later patient therapy. In 8 months, they'll begin testing of the recombinant against HIV strains to validate effectiveness. And in 12 months time, they will enter pre-clinical primate macaque trials to validate effectiveness in primates.
The company says it is motivated by the desire to save lives. Each year, HIV takes the lives of over 1.2 million individuals. And in 2015, 190,000 children died of AIDS-related illnesses (over 500 each day). Approximately 2 million people are newly infected each year with HIV. And over 36 million individuals today have the virus.

Saying that the efforts of Big Pharma have been misdirected, with $16B spent on ARVs annually with no cure in site, BioClonetics launched this crowdfunding campaign to provide people with "the rare opportunity to invest in something that is meaningful for mankind and particularly in areas of the world where medical therapies are not as readily available as in the U.S.," said Cotropia.

Investors can contribute at various levels. For $250, you reserve your place on the Official Founders Page of the website. For $500, you'll also get company updates on the development of monoclonal antibodies. You can even make a large investment, and get the right to future shares in BioClonetics.

"I am very happy and excited to see the development of this monoclonal antibody move ahead. Combination neutralizing monoclonal antibody treatment of HIV-positive mothers and their infants offers a potential alternative to the current nevirapine regimen which has some significant problems in creating drug resistant virus variants and could also be used in combination with newer proposed interventions such as tenofovir," said Yvonne J. Bryson, Chief, Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "Clone 3, in combination with other neutralizing monoclonal antibodies, offers the potential for safely protecting infants from infection from a broad range of primary HIV-1 isolates, and I look forward to being involved in its clinical evaluation."