Subject: Medicorp to Try Infected Blood As AIDS Therapy
Date: Published: 8/21/87 48 lines
Source:  WALL STREET JOURNAL. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

   Medicorp to Try
   Infected Blood
   As AIDS Therapy
    ---
   By Marilyn Chase
   Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

   Medicorp Inc., a closely held biotechnology concern based
in Montreal, said it is preparing to launch a preliminary
test of a potential AIDS therapy using the blood of infected
but healthy volunteers.
   The safety test will involve 70 patients with AIDS, or
acquired immune deficiency syndrome, at St. Stephens and
Westminster hospitals in London, and at a Veterans
Administration hospital in New York.
   The technique, known as passive immunotherapy, involves
taking blood plasma from people who test positive for
antibodies and have developed high levels of them in their
 blood.  The plasma will be drawn and treated with an
anti-viral drug and heat, and then infused into the AIDS
patients once a month for at least a year.
   Abraham Karpas of Cambridge University in England
developed the technique and licensed it to Medicorp, the
company said.  Initial tests involving four patients at
Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge turned up no toxicity.
Two of the patients died 11 months and 15 months after
therapy, respectively; two are still alive after 24 months,
according to Jack Snyder, senior vice president of Medicorp,
who called the results "encouraging."
   Others were skeptical of the approach, however.  A
spokeswoman at the National Insitutes of Health said some
immunologists believe passive immunotherapy has "not much
rationality for AIDS, because we don't know the function of
antibodies, especially since many infected people with
antibodies in their blood often go on to develop the disease
anyway."
   Antibodies are proteins produced by the body's immune
system as a part of its defense against foreign microbes.

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