Foreign patent applications are filed on selected inventions to extend market coverage for U.S. companies and may also be available for licensing. A signed Confidential Disclosure Agreement will be required to receive a copy of the patent application. Patent Issued 27 June 89 U.S. Patent No. These antibodies provide a means for directly detecting the virus in the sera, blood or blood products of AIDS patients or HIV-1 carriers. Such methods are an important advance over the indirect antibody detection methods presently used.
Methods based on antibody detection give false negatives if no antibodies have yet been produced.
These antibodies are believed to provide a positive indication of the presence of the virus at any stage of the disease in a patient or in a healthy carrier of virus. Usually, these aliquots are best stored lyophilized. Yet, researchers have never had a way to keep aliquots sterile through the lyophilization process. Consequently, each aliquot has had to be filter-sterilized when reconstituted for use. Alternatively, researchers have had to forego lyophilization and store their solutions in the less-stable frozen form.