Subject: Harvard Researcher Sees Poor Success for a Popular AIDS Therapy
Date: Published: 6/15/88 92 lines
Source:  WALL STREET JOURNAL. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

   Harvard Researcher Sees Poor Chances
   Of Success for a Popular AIDS Therapy
    ---
   By Marilyn Chase
   Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

   STOCKHOLM -- A Harvard University researcher gave poor
chances of success for a popular new experimental approach to
AIDS therapy.
   William Haseltine of Harvard and the Dana-Farber Cancer
Institute in Boston said that the body's paradoxical response
to the acquired immune deficiency virus "raises serious
problems for the use of CD4 as a therapy."
   CD4, which is expected to enter human clinical tests later
this year, is currently being developed by at least half a
dozen commercial and academic research groups in the U. S. and
in Europe, including Genentech Inc., a biotechnology company
in South San Francisco, and the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.  CD4 is the protein on the surface of
human white blood lymphocytes, to which the AIDS virus binds
during infection.
   Current research into its use is based on the theory that
doctors could flood the body with synthetic copies of CD4,
made by gene-splicing, deploying them like tiny decoys to
lure the virus away from the white blood cells it normally
infects.
   However, Dr. Haseltine in a keynote address at the
conference yesterday, asserted that in a paradoxical reaction
to the AIDS virus, about 10% of patients develop antibodies
against the CD4 protein on their own cells.  This is known as
an "auto-immune reaction" because the body is attacking
itself.
   "If people are given CD4, they will make antibodies to it
as they do to insulin," Dr. Haseltine said, adding that this
could be dangerous.
   "There's no scientific evidence" supporting Dr. 
Haseltine's assertion, said Daniel J. Capon, a Genentech
scientist working on CD4.  "It's premature to speculate."
   Added Stephen Sherwin, another Genentech scientist, "CD4
is clearly going to have to be tested in patients.  We need
clinical trials."  Some scientists said it would be bad if
support for a drug trial dried up because of criticism by Dr. 
Haseltine.
   In the realm of animal experiments, there was good news
and bad news from researchers at the conference.
   The bad news came from Jorg Eichberg of the Southwest
Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, Texas.  Dr. 
Eichberg said efforts to immunize chimpanzees against the
AIDS virus with HIV immune globulin failed to protect the
animals against a later challenge with live virus.  The immune
globulin was made from pooled serum of donors who had been
exposed to the AIDS virus and made a range of antibodies to
it.
   All the animals in the test became infected despite the
treatment, suggesting that merely giving antibodies won't be
a useful tool of prevention.  The project was a joint effort
by Dr. Eichberg and collaborators at the Pasteur Institute in
Paris; the Lindley F. Kimball Research Institute of the New
York Blood Center in New York; and the Central Laboratories
of the Netherlands Red Cross in Amsterdam.
   But there was also reported progress by the National
Institutes of Health in its effort to create a gene-spliced
mouse that would carry AIDS virus genes and mimic a state of
infection, giving doctors a new model for testing therapies.
   The experiment, by Malcolm A. Martin and colleagues at the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a unit
of NIH, raised an outcry by environmentalists who feared the
hybrid rodent with AIDS in its genes might escape and breed
with wild mice to create a new reservoir of the virus.
Scientists created a jail-like habitat to contain the mice,
complete with moats of chlorine bleach.
   John M. Leonard of NIAID reported yesterday that the
so-called transgenic mouse is expressing the virus, and has
developed an immune dysfunction and swollen glands, much as
humans do when infected by the AIDS virus.
   This is good news due to the paucity of good animal
models.  Chimpanzees are costly and rare.  They also react
differently to the virus than humans, thus raising questions
about the application of chimp studies to the human epidemic.
   Dr. Leonard said the experiment shows that the transgenic
mice "can be used to evaluate the effect of drugs" against
the epidemic ailment.

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