Invirion, Inc. Forms Strategic Partnership with Worldwide AIDS Coalition (WWAC) In Fight Against HIV/AIDS in Africa
The executive teams of Invirion and the Worldwide AIDS Coalition today announced the formation of a strategic partnership between the two organizations in order to fight AIDS in Africa. Their work together will help to diagnose and assess the success of treatments against the deadly disease.
Washington DC (PRWEB) March 6, 2005
The Worldwide AIDS Coalition (www. fightaidsnow. org) announced a strategic partnership with Invirion Inc. to assure availability of high performance, low cost diagnostics to monitor the treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean.
Co-founder and Executive Director for the WWAC, Dennis M Israelski, M. D. mentions, “We are extremely pleased that a company like Invirion, shares our passion for ending the pandemic of communicable diseases globally. ” WWAC supports the efforts of effective and innovative organizations in the fight against global public health disparity by focusing attention on the crisis of HIV/AIDS. Their mission is to facilitate consilience in global efforts to overcome obstacles and barriers to HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment in resource poor communities.
Dr. Israelski states, “The pandemic of HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects places that can least afford care and treatment; it is without a doubt one of the greatest public health and moral issues of our times. Our vision includes creating a vehicle to channel innovative technology to facilitate action and cooperation between Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), academia and governments to expand sustainable systems of HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment for people and communities most in need. We are excited to have access to the Invirion ViroTect One that will replace CD4 and viral load tests with a single assay that is much quicker and simpler to run at a fraction of the cost of traditional diagnostics.”
Invirion, Inc. (www. invirion. com) was founded to bring state-of-the-art, biologically relevant basic science technology to the clinical marketplace to ensure the highest standard of care for patients. Invirion is the first single cell diagnostics company dedicated to the early detection, monitoring and treatment of life-threatening viral diseases such as HIV/AIDS, cervical cancer, and organ transplant rejection. InvirionÂ’s novel HIV detection system monitors response to anti-retroviral therapy on the same instruments, flow cytometers, that measure CD4 counts. Published work has demonstrated that InvirionÂ’s ViroTect system correlates extremely well with plasma viral load and can be run at a fraction of the cost on the installed instrumentation base of cytometers. InvirionÂ’s assays are compatible with all vendorÂ’s cytometers including the new generation of capillary cytometers.
Bruce K. Patterson, M. D., Founder of Invirion states “This opportunity validates our decade long effort to demonstrate the scientific, clinical, and economic advantages of detecting and monitoring viral disease in cells that are infected by viruses rather than in plasma where the virus is deposited. Invirion’s innovative technology is adaptable to the installed instrumentation for CD4 counting eliminating the need for costly new equipment and infrastructure. We feel that this model provides a tremendous benefit especially in countries that are faced with limited financial and clinical resources yet have the majority of afflicted individuals”.
Details and conditions of the alliance were not fully disclosed.
Worldwide nearly 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS and in 2004, there were nearly 5 million new infections with over 3 million deaths. Every 6 seconds, a new person is infected and every 10 seconds a person dies of HIV/AIDS. Since 1981, over 28 million have died of HIV/AIDS. This global pandemic has been called our generationÂ’s holocaust.
The Worldwide AIDS Coalition (WWAC). is a non-profit organization, with a team of Scientific Advisors from the San Francisco Bay area, financial offices in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Administrative offices located in Washington D. C.
WWAC supports the efforts of effective and innovative organizations in the fight against global public health disparity by focussing attention on the crisis of HIV/AIDS. Its founders are William Lloyd Wiley, PhD, MBA of Charlotte, North Carolina who serves as the Chairman of the Board and Dennis M. Israelski, M. D. of Stanford University School of Medicine who serves as Executive Director.
The Worldwide AIDS CoalitionÂ’s mission is to facilitate consilience in global efforts to scale up HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment in resource poor communities. The Worldwide AIDS CoalitionÂ’s vision is to provide a vehicle to channel U. S. corporate benevolence to facilitate action and cooperation between Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), academia and governments to expand sustainable systems of HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment for people and communities most in need. We bring a focus and organize the needed financial, material and pharmaceutical resources for the current public health emergency of HIV/ AIDS in Africa, Asia, and around the globe, to establish a coalition of key stakeholders interested in public health equity.
Contact Information:
Dr Dennis Israelski
WWAC
650-208-6612
Or
Joe Kopetka
Invirion, Inc.
773-469-4348
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