Dr. Cummins: Amarillo Biosciences was founded in 1984 and went public in 1996. Our focus initially was on animal health, where we've conducted studies in cattle, swine, poultry, dogs, cats and horses. I'm a veterinarian and all of our initial work was in animal health. However, after going public, we focused on human health, where we have conducted 28 human clinical trials in autoimmune diseases, such as Sjogren's Syndrome and infectious diseases, such as hepatitis B and C and AIDS. All of these studies tested low-dose oral interferon because that's basically our technology, i.e. using interferon orally in low doses. We've raised about 36 million in the history of the company and we believe we're about 3 million short of achieving FDA approval if we focus on oral warts in HIV positive subjects. So that's where we are at this moment. We have gone back to our interest in animal health because of agro-bioterrorism and the concerns that somebody is going to bring foot and mouth disease virus into the US. Foot and mouth disease virus is the most contagious virus known, but it's also extremely sensitive to interferon. So we think we can add interferon to the feed and actually boost the immune system of animals, thereby providing a good way to try to tolerate this disease, rather than try to kill all the animals. The government is poised to depopulate the animals and to try and depopulate them faster than the virus can spread or the terrorists can infect them. We think that is going to ultimately fail because the terrorists will just keep introducing virus. We're quite eager to have testing of our ideas. We've submitted a grant proposal along with a large animal health company in which we're trying to get the government to look at our alternatives to depopulation. We have about 97 million cattle in the US and maybe 58 million swine. The theories and the predictions are that if a terrorist were to bring the virus and drop it off in five states simultaneously, which would be quite easy to do, that the virus would, within two weeks be in 44 states and the government would have to kill 48.5 million animals. The impact of that would be disastrous. So we're very eager to be part of an alternative because the foot and mouth disease virus doesn't kill animals, the government kills the animals. So it's an interesting problem. Everybody looks at what happened in the UK just two years ago where they did go in and stamp out the virus by killing millions of animals. However, the problem in the UK was a sheep problem because 81% of what they killed were sheep. However, if it comes to the US, that's not going to be our problem; our problem is going to be swine and cattle. I'm particularly interested in this because I'm located in Amarillo, Texas. Last year, within 100 miles, we fed 7 million head of cattle. This is the most intensive cattle raising part of the United States and one of the most intensive in the world. So we feel like we're a prime target for acts of agro-terrorism. We're trying to be part of the solution and that's the effort we've been making in the last year or so. I've been talking to every state and federal official who'll listen. But our main objective is to try to get FDA approval for use with humans.
Tickers included in this excerpt: AMAR
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.