Subject: New AIDS Study May Lead to Test Diagnosing Disease
Date: Published: 2/12/86 60 lines
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

   New AIDS Study
   May Lead to Test
   Diagnosing Disease
    ---
   Harvard Scientists Discover
   Antibodies to the Virus
   In the Saliva of Patients
    ---
   By Marilyn Chase
   Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

   Harvard scientists unveiled two new studies that could
influence development of diagnostic tests or drugs for
acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
   Antibodies against the AIDS virus -- currently measured in
blood as a means of screening for infection -- now have been
found in saliva as well, according to Myron Essex of the
Harvard School of Public Health.
   "This may be the reason AIDS isn't transmissable by
saliva," Mr. Essex said in an interview.  His interpretation
stems from the fact that the antibody neutralizes the virus
in saliva or clumps onto virus particles, hindering them from
infecting new cells.
   On a practical level, discovery of the antibody in saliva
may enable companies to develop faster and simpler screening
tests that don't require needles and blood.  Mr. Essex said he
could forsee development of a home test kit people could use
in private.  Currently more than a half dozen companies
manufacture the blood screening tests, which are used by
blood banks and physicians, and some of them are believed to
be now looking into development of a saliva test as well.
   The report is to be published in the March issue of the
journal, Blood.
   Separately, William Haseltine of Harvard Medical School
published a new study on the genes believed responsible for
the virulence of the AIDS virus.
   In a study published today in the British journal Nature,
Dr. Haseltine said the AIDS virus has a gene, called the
transactivator, or TAT, that makes a protein that acts upon
ribonucleic acid, or RNA, to boost the output of other viral
proteins in the infected cell by 1,000 times.
   Discovery of this mechanism of gene regulation could allow
future development of anti-AIDS drugs that would focus on
that part of the virus's life cycle in which RNA makes viral
proteins, Dr. Haseltine said.  Certain antibiotics might be
adapted for this purpose, he said.
   Dr. Haseltine also said in an interview that he could
forsee a use for the TAT gene's protein production
accelerator by the biotechnology industry to boost production
of desired protein products.

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