Subject: French Researcher Reports Progress In Developing AIDS Vaccine
Date: Published: 4/21/88 77 lines
Source:  WALL STREET JOURNAL. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

   French Researcher Reports Progress
   In Effort to Develop AIDS Vaccine
    ---
   By Marilyn Chase
   Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

   Researchers announced another step in their efforts to
develop a vaccine to prevent AIDS. 
   Daniel Zagury, the French AIDS researcher, who startled
the scientific world by injecting himself with an
experimental AIDS vaccine last year, said he has overcome two
hurdles facing vaccine development:  the virus' ability to
mutate, and the need for a two-pronged immune reaction to
combat it.  He emphasized however, that he is still far from a
practical, useable vaccine.
   Dr. Zagury, of Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris,
said he has devised a series of boosters to his original
injection.  These boosters, he said, have enabled his body to
react to several different strains of the AIDS virus, and to
develop both antibodies and "killer cells" -- two kinds of
immune protection believed necessary to fend off the virus
for AIDS, or aquired immune deficiency syndrome.
   As previously reported, Dr. Zagury's first experiment used
a gene-spliced vaccine based on vaccinia -- the workhorse
virus used in smallpox immunization -- into which scientists
inserted the gene for the AIDS virus.  However, this original
vaccine sparked only a weak immune reaction.
   Dr. Zagury said he tried a number of different boosters on
his group of healthy French and Zairean volunteers, but the
approach that worked best was the one he used on himself.
This involved removing a sample of his own blood, infecting
it with the vaccinia-AIDS hybrid and reinjecting it.
   Dr. Zagury issued a firm caveat, but offered carefully
worded encouragement.  "Although this protocol isn't practical
for a large-scale vaccine trial, our results show for the
first time that an immune state against HIV (the AIDS virus)
can be obtained in man," Dr. Zagury said.
The report, which is scheduled for publication in this
week's edition of the British journal Nature, was written in
collaboration with Robert C. Gallo of the National Cancer
Institute, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, and
researchers in Paris, Brussels and Kinshasa, Zaire.
   Other scientists viewed the work with cautious enthusiasm.
Vaccine researcher Dani Bolognesi of Duke University said:  
"Daniel has been able to generate some rather impressive
immune responses -- so far at least without any negative
consequences to him.  Now we'll have to see if we can parlay
this (data) into a practical vaccine -- which this is not."
   Paul Luciw, a scientist at the University of California at
Davis, called the work "interesting and important," involving
a thorough analysis of the human immune response.  "Most
importantly," Dr. Luciw said, "They're investigating various
ways of presenting the viral antigens (proteins) to the human
immune system."  Dr. Luciw's laboratory, one of several which
just received $4 million in NIH grant funding for vaccine
research, urged continuation of experiments involving animal
models, such as the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, or SIV,
which produces AIDS-like diseases in primates.
   Dr. Zagury said his vaccine should be considered a
prototype for testing, but whether it confers protection
against AIDS hasn't been proved.  The ultimate test of
efficacy -- exposing the vaccinated subjects to the live AIDS
virus -- hasn't been done for ethical reasons.  However, the
next step is to test a vaccine in a large group of volunteers
who are at high risk of being exposed to the virus.  Dr. 
Zagury said he is trying to streamline his booster procedure
to make it more widely applicable.

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