Penny Stock Aethlon Medical Gains 28% On Ebola Claim

Aethlon Medical, Inc. AEMD extended its gains Monday on news that the penny stock company had tested its blood-purification device on a patient suffering from Ebola in Germany.

The San Diego-based company, which has traded as low as $0.10 per share in the past year, recently gained 28 percent to $0.42 per share. It had reached $0.47 earlier in the session.

Before treatment with Aethlon's so-called Hemopurifier device, the patient had 400,000 virus particles per milliliter of blood, according to the company.

After treatment, the measure dropped to 1,000 per milliliter and never rose above that level again, Aethlon said.

The patient has been discharged from hospital care, but Aethlon didn't say whether it believed the device played a role.

Until earlier this month, Aethlon had touted the device for filtering blood of patients suffering from hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus.

Aethlon said the device has been tested in India.

In June 2013, Aethlon said it obtained an Investigational Device Exemption from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that would permit a safety test of the device on ten patients infected with hepatitis C.

As of recently, however, the test hadn't been launched.

Aethlon, which has also touted the device for treatment of bio-warfare victims, obtained a $5.9 million, five-year contract in 2011 from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The contract is aimed at developing a portable device that removes "dirty" blood from the body, and returns "clean" blood" "in a manner similar to dialysis treatment of kidney failure," Aethlon said.