Break-Through Invention for Treating Cancer -- Australian Biotech Company Completes Round 1 Funding

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA--(Marketwire - Apr 13, 2012) - ImmunAid Pty. Ltd., a private Australian-based biotechnology company, is delighted to inform the market that it has successfully completed its first capital raising of A$1M from independent arm's-length investors residing in USA, Europe and Australia. This funding now values ImmunAid Pty. Ltd. at A$10M, with the new investors holding precisely 10% of the Company.

ImmunAid Pty. Ltd. was incorporated in 2001 with the specific mission of focusing on new pioneering concepts in the treatment of disease, based on monitoring the immune cycle of each individual patient and then determining the optimal time to deliver treatment to that patient.

The original concept was developed by inventor Martin Ashdown, who postulated that the immune system switches itself "on and off" in a continuous, repeating cycle in patients with certain diseases, including auto-immune disease, and that treatment should be timed to support the body's own efforts to fight off such disease. Subsequently, Ashdown expanded his concept to include cancer and also degenerative diseases.

After appropriate laboratory tests, first clinical trials were duly initiated in Australia and USA some five years ago, and the data obtained then led to the granting of valuable patents to the Company. These trials are now being expanded, including in Europe, where an important enabling patent was awarded to ImmunAid in late 2011.

ImmunAid Pty. Ltd. has, until now, been majority-owned by Genetic Technologies Limited (ASX: GTG) (NASDAQ: GENE). Following completion of the current funding round, Genetic Technologies' shareholding in the Company is now 45.5%. ImmunAid anticipates a second funding round will be offered to sophisticated investors later in 2012, after it achieves further clinical and patent successes.

The Mayo Clinic is currently conducting a clinical trial to further assess the influence of timed delivery of conventional chemotherapy for patients with cancer (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT01328535). Several hospitals and universities in Australia have conducted trials into the ImmunAid concepts on cancer and also certain other diseases, including multiple sclerosis and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Dr. Svetomir Markovic, chair of the Melanoma Group at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, has said, "The discovery of the regulated immune response cycle in cancer patients is potentially of immense clinical significance with profound public health implications."

Professor Brendon Coventry, a senior surgical consultant and practising surgeon at Royal Adelaide Hospital, has conducted clinical trials over several years into the ImmunAid concepts. He says, "Treatments 'randomly' given without consideration to a patient's immune cycle explains why some patients achieve a complete recovery and others do not."

ImmunAid Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Mervyn Jacobson, explains: "Once we realized this immune cycle is real and measurable, we postulated that the administration of chemotherapy and other anti-cancer therapies should be timed to work with each individual patient's immune system to attack that specific cancer in that specific patient. The results then spoke for themselves."

Approximately $32 billion is spent globally each year on cancer drugs, yet the cancer mortality rate in the United States is more than 11,000 per week. An analysis of 63 clinical trials published since 2000 shows the average complete response rate -- becoming cancer free -- in late-stage patients across a wide range of cancers is 7 percent -- precisely consistent with the algorithm now developed by ImmunAid.