About T-Cyte Therapeutics
T-Cyte Therapeutics (www.TCyte.com) is dedicated to providing safe, effective, science-based products that enhance the health of animals, allowing owners to enjoy their longer-lived and healthier animals. In the worldwide medical community’s scramble to find a cure for the deadly HIV/AIDS pandemic, scientists used the Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV) and Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) as research models for the human diseases. Advances in understanding the immune system were moving at break-neck speed. Even before this all-out race, Dr. Terry Beardsley, as a graduate researcher specializing in immunology at Baylor College of Medicine, had set out to discover a biological treatment pathway that emulated the body’s own natural defense processes, a discovery that could reverse the fatal effects of severe combined immune deficiency disease (SCID). This work resulted in a better understanding of bone marrow transplantation and the function of the thymus gland. While a faculty member at UCLA, Dr. Beardsley demonstrated that: retrovirus infection alters the structure of the thymus gland and its ability to produce mature, functional T-Cells; and retrovirus infection of thymic epithelial cells caused defective T-Cell development, leading to immune deficiency and/or leukemia. He ultimately proved that the destruction of thymic epithelium is a major contributor to failure of immune regeneration in AIDS. At the University of California, Dr. Beardsley refined this cellular theory and was the first scientist to clone thymic epithelial cells, successfully identifying and describing one of the immunoregulatory proteins involved in the process and the type of cells that produced it: Peptides extracted from thymus gland cells could control the immune system’s response to viral attack, culminating in a landmark publication of Dr. Beardsley’s research findings in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. With anti-HIV drug cocktails promising hope for HIV/AIDS patients, Beardsley studies had shown that his Lymphocyte T-cell Immunomodulator (LTCI) molecule could be used as a therapy for the treatment of immunocompromised cats. He formed T-Cyte Therapeutics, Inc. to develop LTCI and treat the devastating effects of FeLV and FIV viruses. Until LTCI was granted a conditional license by the USDA, there was no effective treatment of the disease or its symptoms; practitioners could only prescribe palliative care, isolation, and ultimately, euthanasia. LTCI is able to enhance the immune status of FeLV/FIV-infected cats, with a corresponding, significant improvement in clinical symptoms. The therapeutic effects appear to be long-lasting and without side effects.
Read more about this topic: Lymphocyte T-Cell Immune Modulator