Subject: Cambridge BioScience, Agouron, Scientist Get AIDS-Research Grant
Date: Published: 9/10/87 42 lines
Source:  WALL STREET JOURNAL. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

   Cambridge BioScience,
   Agouron, Scientist Get
    AIDS-Research Grant

   WORCESTER, Mass. -- Cambridge BioScience Corp. said that
it, Agouron Pharmaceuticals Inc. and a Boston researcher were
awarded a $4.3 million grant from the National Institutes of
Health for research on new drugs to fight the AIDS virus.
   Cambridge said that it also signed an agreement under
which Agouron, a La Jolla, Calif., drug company, will have
the right to sell drugs developed in the joint effort and
Cambridge will have the right to sell vaccines and
diagnostics.
   William Haseltine, a scientist at Harvard University and
Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, also is part of the
group researching acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
   In research on the virus that causes AIDS, Cambridge, a
biotechnology concern, will use genetic-engineering
technology to make proteins known to be essential to the
virus.  Agouron then will analyze the proteins with X-ray
crystallography, a technique that enables scientists to
visualize the detailed, three-dimensional structure of
molecules.
   Using computer-aided simulation of the proteins'
structures, Agouron may be able to devise drugs to render the
proteins inactive and to kill the virus, Cambridge said.  The
same strategy also may lead to improved diagnostics and
vaccines.
   As previously reported, Cambridge recently signed another
collaboration agreement with Institut Merieux, a French
vaccine manufacturer, for joint research on potential AIDS
vaccines.

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