Courtesy of Chris Lonsford on Facebook:
History Lesson: Where does Dr Allen fit into the history of CytoDyn? (Posted on another group). Thought it was worth sharing!
Where does Allen D. Allen fit in to this inventor's puzzle? Allen was most curious when it was discovered that the AIDS virus infected chimps, but did not make them sick. Why was AIDS killing humans? How was the human immune system
different?
In the same way that a composer creates a song or a software engineer designs an application, Allen wondered if one could modify the human immune system to solve this problem. He began to realize that a monoclonal antibody (MAB) could change the immune system so that it would stop "helping" the AIDS virus.
The future of medicine is full of hope, theory and opinion. AIDS was, and is, a frightening epidemic and the hysteric reaction of social and political forces were creating great pressure on the medical community that was grasping at straws to find a solution. New theories and treatments were proposed, tested and often failed. New drugs were creating dangerous side effects and even killing patients. Often doctors think in a herd-like mentality. At the time, most experts believed that a MAB antibody could never be used as a treatment.
Fred Chris was a gay man with AIDS and a friend of Allen Allen. He became the first to receive a monoclonal antibody. The results were instantaneous. Symptoms, such as skin lesions, vanished overnight and his T-cell count climbed. The damage, born of the AIDS virus, was halted.
A second, third and fourth patient were treated. The results were miraculously the same. On the West coast, word began to spread among the desperate AIDS doctors. The doctors treated two to three hundred patients with the antibody. Data from 188 patients were eventually submitted to the FDA. Unlike most other AIDS treatments, there were no serious side effects and no one was dying from it.
The elation that Allen felt was soon deflated. Armed with his data, he approached pharmaceutical companies and venture capitalists to launch a study. The expert medical opinion believed that a monoclonal antibody could not be used as treatment. Allen was kicked to the curb.
The patients who had been successfully treated and their friends and family conferred with Allen. They created and funded a privately held company, designed to launch a formal clinical trial. With approximately thirty-five shareholders and his eldest daughter Corinne, who had become a CPA, CytoDyn, Inc. was born.
