Ainos Announces Strategic Relationship with InnoPharmax to Jointly Develop Combined Oral Therapy for Coronavirus Infection

SAN DIEGO, CA / ACCESSWIRE / December 7, 2021 / Ainos, Inc. ("we", "our", or the "company"), (OTC PINK:AIMD), a diversified healthcare company engaged in the discovery and development of pharmaceutical, medical devices and biotech products announced it entered into a Development and Sales Agreement with InnoPharmax, Inc. ("InnoPharmax"), a specialty pharmaceutical company focused in the development and commercialization of products for the treatment of infectious diseases, immunology, and oncology.

Ainos and InnoPharmax agreed to jointly develop and promote an orally administered cytotoxin-induced complementary combined therapy ("CICCT") for the treatment of COVID-19 and potentially other viral infections. The companies plan to develop this combined therapy leveraging Ainos' VELDONA^® drug platform based on low-dose oral interferon along with InnoPharmax's orally administered antiviral drug, GemOral^®.

"We believe that CICCT combined with interferon may increase the production of human cytotoxin, an autoimmune hormone that is reported to inhibit viruses," said Ainos' CEO Chun-Hsien Tsai. "The high level of COVID-19 cases -- still nearly 100,000 new confirmed cases despite increasing vaccination rates reported each day and more than 1,000 confirmed deaths during the past week in the U.S. alone according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services - suggests that the world needs a broader range of effective antiviral therapies," he observed.

"For COVID-19 patients we are particularly focused on cytokine storm, an imbalanced innate immunity response that causes severe inflammation in the lungs and necrosis associated with a high IL-6/IFN ratio," remarked Chun-Hsien Tsai. "We believe a combined therapy of Ainos' VELDONA^® drug therapeutic and InnoPharmax's D07001 GemOral^® can effectively increase the secretion of interferon in the human body by stimulating secretion in vivo and in vitro, thereby inhibiting the replication of coronavirus and effectively enhancing immunoreaction," Mr. Tsai said.

The companies plan to jointly perform animal and investigator-initiated trials for safety and efficacy testing in Taiwan early next year and conduct a subsequent Phase III clinical trial with the goal of applying for regulatory approvals, including U.S. emergency use authorization if available, sometime in the third quarter of 2022. Upon commercialization, Ainos will be responsible for global sale in countries for which the product is approved for uses, and InnoPharmax will be responsible for drug production and manufacturing. The two parties will share profits on drug sales.