CytoDyn, Inc. (Pink Sheets:CYDY) has appointed Nader Z. Pourhassan, Ph.D., as its Chief Operating Office. Dr. Pourhassan was born in Tehran in 1963, immigrated to the United States in 1977, and became a U.S. citizen in 1991. He received his Bachelor of Science from Utah State University in 1985, his Master of Science from Brigham Young in 1990, and his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1998. After being an instructor in engineering and mathematics, he became a successful businessman. After Dr. Pourhassan became aware of the economic and humanitarian potential of Cytolin — CytoDyn’s novel immune therapy for treating HIV/AIDS, he made it his priority to bring his considerable scientific, marketing, and management skills to our Company.

Development of Cytolin had been delayed after the CEO of Amerimmune Pharmaceuticals, the previous licensee of the technology, made an effort to take that company's assets as his personal property. Based on an opportunity offered by one of CytoDyn’s largest shareholders, the company used the time needed to recover Cytolin to pursue development of a novel influenza vaccine. However, because the vaccine was pre-clinical, the economic downturn favored abandoning that project in favor of Cytolin , a first-in-class product for which there is considerable human experience, as reported by CBS-TV News. The Company now intends to pursue a Phase II study of Cytolin as salvage therapy for HIV/AIDS.

About Cytolin

HIV infects other species, such as chimpanzees. But only humans get sick from HIV infection. In the early 1990s, several teams of university-based scientists reported in the peer-review literature that this is because of a flaw in the human immune system. Cytolin , a monoclonal antibody, is designed to correct that flaw. This is different from "reconstituting" the immune system, which can make patients sick ("immune reconstitution syndrome"). With the human immune system working better, we would expect it to do a better job of controlling HIV infection, as suggested by the preliminary results from a Phase I(b)/II(a) clinical trial. Because a properly functioning immune system should control any strain of HIV, Cytolin is intended to help patients infected with drug-resistant strains of HIV, and might even prevent drug resistance from developing when used in combination with antiretroviral drugs.