Aethlon Medical at Emerging Growth Conference 83: Strategic Updates on Hemopurifier

On Tuesday, 17 June 2025, Aethlon Medical Inc. (NASDAQ:AEMD) presented at the Emerging Growth Conference 83. CEO and CFO Jim Franks provided a strategic overview of the company’s initiatives, highlighting both promising developments and ongoing challenges. The focus was on their Hemopurifier device, potential applications in long COVID treatment, and oncology trials. Despite delays in some trials, Franks expressed optimism about future opportunities and growth.

Key Takeaways

• Aethlon is collaborating with UCSF to explore Hemopurifier’s use in long COVID treatment.
• Oncology trials in India face regulatory delays, while Australian trials progress.
• Recent publication supports Hemopurifier’s evaluation in organ transplantation.
• Potential government grants could support long COVID research.
• The company is pursuing patent protection for new applications.

Operational Updates

Long COVID Research:

• Aethlon is working with UC San Francisco on long COVID patient samples.
• The company plans to present findings at the Keystone Conference in August.
• Long COVID affects an estimated 44 to 48 million Americans, presenting significant market potential.
• Aethlon is exploring government grant opportunities to support this research.

Oncology Trials:

• The oncology trial in India has been delayed due to regulatory changes, but is expected to start soon.
• The Australian trial is progressing well, with patient recruitment underway at three hospitals, including one affiliated with the University of Sydney.
• This trial is a safety trial involving three cohorts with escalating treatment frequency.
• Results from the University of Sydney’s lab on EV reductions and T cell markers are anticipated soon.

Hemopurifier Device:

• The Hemopurifier is an extracorporeal device used with blood pumping machines to bind extracellular vesicles.
• A recent publication supports its evaluation in organ transplantation and other areas beyond oncology and infectious diseases.
• Aethlon is pursuing patent protection in this space, leveraging their expertise in EV reduction.

Future Outlook

• Aethlon expects to announce the commencement of the India trials soon.
• Further updates on the Australian trial’s progress are anticipated.
• The company is hopeful for government grants to aid long COVID treatment research.
• Significant milestones are expected in oncology trials, with continued development in EV reduction.

Conclusion

Readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for more detailed insights into Aethlon Medical’s strategic initiatives and future plans.

Full transcript - Emerging Growth Conference 83:

Anna, Host: Back everyone, happy to bring back Jim Franks, CEO and CFO of Aethlon Medical Inc. Trades on the NASDAQ AEMD. It’s a medical therapeutic company focused on developing products to treat cancer and life threatening infectious diseases. Welcome back, Jim. Now, since we last talked, you released news on the potential utility of your Hemopurifiers used to treat long COVID.

So we definitely want to hear your update and focus in on this exciting finding.

Jim Franks, CEO and CFO, Aethlon Medical Inc.: Thanks, Anna, and happy to be back updating everybody on Aflon Medical. We have been working behind the scenes with a very prestigious group at University of California in San Francisco Hospital. They really are experts on long COVID. They have a number of patient samples. They sent us plasma of long COVID patients and then controls to see if our device could bind extracellular vesicles that may play a role in long COVID, as well as the spike protein, which remains in long COVID patients.

We’re a small company, as anybody that follows us knows. So when I became CEO, I focused our efforts on cancer, and that remains our primary emphasis. But once we teed up everything for the oncology trials in India and Australia, that freed up our lab to work on these precious long COVID samples that we’ve had stored for a while. So they’ve done a lot of research. Our results were very interesting.

We shared them with the UC San Francisco team. They encouraged us to apply to a very high end conference called the Keystone Conference in August. And we were accepted to present or to do a poster presentation at that conference. Once the conference happens, we’ll post the numbers, the actual results. So it’s preliminary.

It was cost effective because we only paid for the transportation of the samples to our lab here in San Diego. People that don’t have long COVID probably aren’t aware of this, but the CDC has estimated that the prevalence of long COVID is between six and seven percent of the entire general population. It’s a massive number for between forty four and forty eight million people in The United States that suffer from this affliction. So brain fog, feeling tired all the time. There are a number of symptoms.

The US government spent a billion dollars and they haven’t found a therapy or cure, just kind of band aids. So it’s very early. I don’t want to overstate the importance of this to Aethlon and our shareholders. But I’m hopeful that with our preliminary work, there are possible government grant opportunities here. So we are gonna continue to work on it, albeit it’s not our primary focus.

But it’s it’s exciting. It’s a it’s a real market. It’s a real problem for 44 to 48,000,000 of our fellow Americans. It’s awful.

Anna, Host: Absolutely. And you also had a recent publication in May. Okay, wonderful. Thank you, Jim. Do you wanna talk about your recent publication in May?

It supported evaluating your Hemopurifier, not only in oncology and infectious diseases, but also in organ transplantation and other areas of unmet medical needs. So can we talk a little bit more about that?

Jim Franks, CEO and CFO, Aethlon Medical Inc.: Sure, sure. Happy to. So our device binds, and I should show it. I almost forgot to do that. It’s a extracorporeal device that fits on blood pumping machines like dialysis machines or plasmapheresis machines that are in hospitals and clinics worldwide.

Our product does bind these extracellular vesicles. We used to call them exosomes, but the term of art now is extracellular vesicles or EVs. We’ve originally focused on cancer because tumors emit tremendous numbers of EVs. But other diseases like MS also emit EVs. And it’s possible that by capturing them, we could play a role there.

So, again, once we finished getting ready for the oncology trial, we turned our lab because it was a very logical next step. They’ve honed their techniques of measuring changes in EVs in cancer. So we had them switch to measuring EVs in lung COVID and also in these other disease states. So it’s interesting. We’re applying for some patent protection in this space.

It’s a logical connection to our working oncology with the EV reduction approach.

Anna, Host: Perfect. And are there any updates you can share on your oncology trials in Australia and India?

Jim Franks, CEO and CFO, Aethlon Medical Inc.: Sure. Let me talk about India first. We’ve kind of been hung up for a number of months. They’ve changed their regulations in India. It was originally changing import export regulations and now at least medical devices, if not all life sciences.

So we’ve gone through a whole exercise and hoop jumping with many meetings, and we do expect that we should be able to talk about actually starting that fairly soon. But the signs are good. We’re through a lot. They changed a lot of the rules, but it used to be pretty easy to get things going in India. That’s not the case anymore.

But we think we’re poised to start that soon. In terms of the work in Australia, we have more tangible events there. I think the last time we spoke, I mentioned we have three hospitals that had signed up to run our clinical trial. One was in Adelaide. That’s where the first patient was treated at the January.

The number two hospital was in Gold Coast, North Of Sydney, relatively small population wise. It’s not a major city. And then the third hospital, the by far the largest hospital that we’re working with is affiliated with the University of Sydney. Sydney is a big city. I just looked up today what the Greater Sydney area represents in population.

It’s 5,200,000 people versus Adelaide, which is about 1,400,000 people. So a much bigger population base. We’re affiliated with the major university in town. It took them they’re bigger, they’re burdensome logistics to go through with them, but they’re through the process now. We’re very pleased with their recruiting efforts and patient recruiting efforts.

And I’d like to say we hope to have some news on that front quite soon. I usually don’t make such a strong statement, but we’re very excited about the work going on there. So it’s our primary focus. One, at the risk of being redundant for people that have heard this before, it’s a safety trial. It’s designed for patients with solid tumors who have stable or progressive, meaning getting worse, disease during anti PD-one monotherapy treatment, such as Keytruda or Optivo, which are very popular, unfortunately for the patients’ drugs.

So, it’s a safety trial. Three patients in the first cohort, which is one treatment. Assuming all three patients are treated safely, there’ll be an outside safety board making a decision to proceed to the second cohort, which will be two treatments in a week. And then again, if the safety board deems that it’s been a safe treatment, we’ll go on to the third cohort of three times in a week. And it’s basically a dose finding escalation measurement exercise to see how many times the best treatment would be for cancer patients to receive Hemopurifier treatments.

So, following the first patient treated in January, we need two more to fill out the first cohort. So, we’re shooting to have that happen soon. And that would lead to some important events, the decision by the independent safety board to proceed or not proceed. And then we’ll have University of Sydney’s lab we’ve retained to analyze reductions in EVs and T cell markers and immune response to our therapy. And I’ve been waiting ten years to see that kind of information.

So I’m excited for when we get to that point. So we have some major, major, for our little company, milestones coming soon, we hope.

Anna, Host: Wonderful. Well, that’s wonderful to hear. Happy to hear this update and just continue to come back on, Jim, and give us these updates. We really appreciate it.

Jim Franks, CEO and CFO, Aethlon Medical Inc.: Great. Well, thanks again for the forum to speak.

Anna, Host: Wonderful. Okay, everyone, it’s been a great first day of our two day conference. Thank you so much for joining us. We will see you back here tomorrow morning, 9AM Eastern start time for day two of our super virtual investor conference. We’ll see you tomorrow.

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