Promising New Lyme Disease Drug
Excerpted from News-Medical.Net ( Posted: 2/12/2010 )
Our mission is to bring new drug compounds to the marketplace. And we’ve never been in a stronger position to deliver on that promise. We’ve built the solid foundation needed to take drug therapies from the laboratory to the marketplace. After years in development, we believe several of our most promising compounds are moving closer to clinical trials.
During 2009, Viral Genetics made significant strides on two fronts — scientific and financial. Our drug compounds seem to be showing great potential. Additionally, we’ve built an infrastructure that enables us to use money wisely. We have retired nearly all of our external debt, enabling us to leverage any additional funding to advance new drug therapies — rather than making interest payments to creditors.
Promising Drug Therapy
Lyme Disease
An injection called VGV-L has been developed to treat Lyme disease, an illness that saw a 100% increase in CDC-confirmed cases from 1991 to 2006. Animal studies have been completed with positive results. We are now in the process of introducing our research to the FDA.
This research was supported by grants from two not-for-profit organizations that saw the promise in our approach. Last year, Time for Lyme provided the University of Colorado with $116,000 dedicated to our research. Turn the Corner Foundation contributed another $75,000 to the university during 2009, enabling us to reach this phase of development.
The proposed therapy, like several others in our R&D pipeline, is based on TPT (targeted peptide technologies) and uses synthetic peptides to “trick” cells, making them vulnerable to the body’s natural immune response mechanism.
Full article at: http://www.news-medical.net/news/20100212/Viral-Genetics-Company-update.aspx
Lyme Handbook 
This article gives hope.
Does anyone know if Columbia Lyme is involved in any of the drug development the article speaks to? If not, I wonder why. I thought Columbia Lyme was the the latest and the greatest, regarding Lyme research.
Diane,
RT Gerstner seems to be the link between Viral Genetics and Columbia Lyme.
Richard T. Gerstner joins Viral Genetics as an Advisor after a lifetime of executive management positions and investment in the technology arena. Gerstner spent several years as President and CEO of Telular Corporation, a wireless communication company he took public in the 1990s. Prior to that, he spent 32 years at IBM in several capacities including 10 years as a Corporate Vice President during which he served as Chief Planning Officer, Head of the Asia/Pacific region located in Tokyo and Group Executive of IBM Personal Computers, and most recently as head of IBM’s PC Group. He is a director of various technology companies and is Chairman of the Advisory Committee to the Columbia Lyme and Tick-Borne Disease Research Center. Mr. Gerstner holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Villanova University and an MS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.
All the best,
Rob