P.R.Newswire, 6/11/2003 09:30

ST. LOUIS, June 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- GenoMed, Inc., a St. Louis, Missouri-based Next Generation Disease Management(TM) company, announced today that it is launching a clinical trial against neurodegenerative diseases, including common ones such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and rare ones like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ("Lou Gehrig's disease") and spinal muscular atrophy.

All of these seemingly unrelated neurological diseases share one thing in common: loss of nerve cells due to "cell suicide", or apoptosis. Where it is known, the inciting cause is different for each disease. For example, amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles cause Alzheimer's disease, ALS is caused by lack of superoxide dismutase, an enzyme which gets rid of oxygen free radicals, and spinal muscular atrophy involves insufficient protein synthesis. The cause of Parkinson's disease is still not known.

But what these diseases appear to share is a final common pathway, involving oxidative stress and cell suicide ("apoptosis") by the nerve cell.

Angiotensin II adds significantly to a cell's oxidative stress, since angiotensin II is known to stimulate production of oxygen free radicals in the cell's mitochondria, its tiny energy factories. The enzyme that makes angiotensin II, angiotensin I-converting enzyme (abbreviated as ACE) is expressed on nerve cells after they make connections with one another. Parkinson's disease is associated with genomic evidence of ACE overactivity.

A logical way to reduce oxidative stress for neurons is therefore to use an ACE inhibitor, or an angiotensin II receptor blocker. These two classes of drugs have been used quite safely in hundreds of millions of patients for a number of years.

For questions, please contact David W. Moskowitz MD, MA(Oxon.), FACP at 314-977-0110, FAX 314-977-0042, email: dwmoskowitz@genomedics.com or visit us at www.genomedics.com .