TESTING PROTOCOL

While the government is trying to find separate treatments to protect survivors at each stage, Aeolus hopes its drug will be able to aid people during the gastrointestinal and lung "waves."


Last year, the company contracted researchers at Duke University to undertake preliminary work in mice showing that the drug could protect the animals from lung damage following irradiation. In the study, mice had the upper-half of their body exposed to radiation. Nearly all the animals that were untreated died within 45 days of exposure, but among the mice treated with the drug only two out of 20 were dead. When the NIH saw the results, they thought it promising enough to offer to bring the drug into their research consortium to test it, McManus said, which they began doing in March 2009.

In that study last year, the NIH noticed that the drug appeared to be protecting the so-called crypt cells in the guts of the mice, and was giving them a small survival advantage. The agency, through Epistem, a research facility located in Manchester, UK, has now started up a larger, second study to confirm the survival benefits in mice.

"It started in March, and we're hoping to get some results by June," McManus said.

For this study, the researchers will expose treated mice to about 15 Gy of radiation, shielding around half of the mouse's body from exposure to ensure enough bone marrow survives to prevent the blood syndrome.

HOW THE DRUG WORKS - MEDICAL APPLICATIONS?

Aeolus 10150 works, in effect, by sweeping up and neutralizing the reactive free radicals that do most of radiation's damage.

When radiation passes through the body, it splits water molecules and creates highly reactive free radicals, McManus explained. These free radicals then collide into other cells and kill them, launching a second explosion of free radicals, resulting in a superoxide radical chain reaction.

"That's why in cancer radiation therapy, as good as beam technology is - even if it only hits the tumor, the cascade from that reaction concussions out from the tumor and damages the healthy cells that surround the tumor," McManus said.

Aeolus' drug aims to stop the reaction in its tracks. Called a catalytic anti-oxidant, it contains a metal, manganese, caged in an organic substance, porphyrin. The metal complex has an affinity for the superoxide radicals, exchanging electrons with them, resulting in their deactivation. The porphyrin shell ensures that the manganese, which can be toxic at high levels, doesn't injure the body.

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