Auditors Question Whether Immune Response Corporation Can Stay in Business
Auditors for Immune Response Corp. have questioned the company's "ability to stay in business" following financial losses and the resignation of its chief financial officer, the Reuters/Los Angeles Times reports. The company, which aims to develop drugs to treat HIV/AIDS, reported a first-quarter loss of $5.2 million, compared to a loss of $5.1 million one year earlier (Reuters/Los Angeles Times, 5/22). Last August, Immune Response announced it would terminate a study of the HIV drug Remune after a Pfizer subsidiary withdrew its development partnership for the research (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 8/31/01). Pfizer said it decided to terminate the partnership because Immune Response had not produced "convincing evidence" that Remune "helps patients" (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 7/9/01). In November 2000, a study conducted by University of California-San Francisco researchers and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that Remune was ineffective in preventing the onset of AIDS (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 11/2/00). Immune Response Corp. announced that it has enough money to continue operating into next month (Reuters/Los Angeles Times, 5/22).
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