USDA-approved Feline Leukemia Virus

and Feline

Immunodeficiency Virus Treatment

 Now Available

 

Murrieta, CA (December 29, 2011)…Dr. Terry Beardsley, founder and principal clinical researcher behind LTCI, the first USDA-approved treatment for Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV) and Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) announced the launch of a new website and a simplified process for veterinarians to order Lymphocyte T-Cell Immunomodulator (LTCI) to treat their patients.

FeLV and FIV infections are two of the most common and fatal feline diseases worldwide. Infections can cause severe immune suppression and anemia and result in increased risk of other infections. LTCI is the first, and only, approved treatment aid in the United States for cats suffering from FeLV and FIV infections.

There was no effective treatment of these diseases or their symptoms until LTCI was granted a conditional license by the USDA. Veterinarians 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 any side effects. 

T-Cyte Therapeutics’ website, www.TCyte.com, and new online capabilities mean that both pet owners and veterinarians can keep up-to-date on advances in the care and treatment of FeLV and FIV, and animal clinics can directly order and manage timely shipments of LTCI, particularly in cases of critically ill patients. The site also features educational and product information on retroviral health care and plans to add a searchable database of veterinary clinics across the country that offer LTCI for cats with FeLV and/or FIV.

“We’ve worked hard to build a website that streamlines access to pertinent, practical and accurate information regarding the treatment of these heretofore untreatable diseases [FeLV and FIV] and give veterinarians direct source access to LTCI.  www.TCyte.com will be an efficient, factual resource for both pet owners and veterinarians,” said Dr. Beardsley. “The site will make it easier for pet owners to locate local veterinarians who treat cats suffering from these terrible maladies; the website will be a one-stop data source to aid in the treatment of FeLV and FIV.”

 

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; that 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 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. That peptides extracted from thymus gland cells could control the immune system's response to viral attack, culminated 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, Dr. Beardsley studies had shown that his Lymphocyte T-cell Immunomodulator (LTCI) molecule could be used as a therapy for the treatment of immuno-compromised cats. He formed T-Cyte Therapeutics, Inc. to develop LTCI to treat the devastating effects of FeLV and FIV viruses in cats.