Subject: AIDS Researcher Finds Early Evidence Vaccine May Stimulate Protective Cells 
Date: Published: 9/25/90 (95 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Technology & Medicine:
    AIDS Researcher Finds Early Evidence
    Vaccine May Stimulate Protective Cells
    ----
    By Richard Koenig
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    A researcher who has taken an unorthodox approach to
 developing an AIDS vaccine reported early evidence that the
 technique could stimulate certain protective "killer" cells
 of the immune system.
    Allan L. Goldstein, a biochemist at George Washington
 University and the lead author of the report, said the
 approach indicates a role in vaccine development for
 so-called core proteins, which are found inside the virus
 that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
    By contrast, most experimental vaccines have been based on
 proteins from the outer envelope of the virus.  In either
 case, the hope is to use noninfectious protein fragments to
 trick the body into mustering an immunological defense
 against infection.
    Because envelope proteins vary subtly among different
 strains of the virus, researchers are still trying to
 determine which protein fragments are both immutable and
 capable of inducing a strong defense.  Core proteins are less
 mutable, but comparatively little investigation has been done
 into their defense-inducing capacity.
    The latest work by Mr. Goldstein's team, reported in the
 current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of
 Sciences, centered on a synthetic peptide, called HGP-30,
 that is identical to a portion of a core protein of the AIDS
 virus.  The HGP-30 vaccine is produced by Viral Technologies
 Inc., a joint venture of Cel-Sci Corp., Alexandria, Va., and
 Alpha 1 Biomedicals Inc., Washington.  Mr. Goldstein is the
 founder of Alpha 1.
    The researchers found that blood drawn from nine persons
 infected with the AIDS virus contained killer cells that
 attacked a laboratory cell line coated with HGP-30.  They
 concluded that the killer cells, of a type known as CD-8
 positive lymphocytes, zeroed in on HGP-30 because those
 lymphocytes had been sensitized by the core protein.  The
 inference is that HGP-30, used as a vaccine, might prompt a
 similar response.
    Collaborating with the George Washington group in the
 report were researchers from Universite Pierre et Marie
 Curie, Paris, and the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda,
 Md.
    In an interview, Mr. Goldstein argued that if a useful
 vaccine is ultimately developed, it may incorporate pieces of
 both core and envelope proteins.  "None of us can say for sure
 that any of the approaches being taken will by itself become
 an effective vaccine," he said.
    He said a protective response in the body to a core
 protein would presumably attack cells infected with the virus
 rather than the virus itself.  He noted reports that core
 proteins show up on the surface of infected cells and thus
 could act as targets for killer cells.  Within the free virus,
 however, core proteins don't present themselves as targets
 since they lie under the viral envelope.
    Mr. Goldstein added that researchers in London have found
 higher counts of CD-8 positive lymphocytes in four persons
 inoculated with HGP-30 during safety trials.  None of the four
 is infected with the AIDS virus.  Three others haven't shown
 higher counts, but they received lower doses of HGP-30.
    The location of the human trials of HGP-30 in London is
 one indication of the slowness with which the core-protein
 approach has been tried in the U. S. The George Washington
 group has yet to win approval for human trials from the Food
 and Drug Administration, though safety trials of HGP-30 in
 people are scheduled to begin in California this fall under
 the auspices of a state program that doesn't require FDA
 clearance.
    Dani P. Bolognesi, an AIDS vaccine researcher at Duke
 University, cautioned that most experimental evidence to date
 "screams for envelope" protein fragments as a constituent of
 an AIDS vaccine.  But, he said, "that doesn't mean you
 couldn't add core {protein} to the vaccine and do better," if
 more evidence in favor of core proteins develops.
    Core proteins are attracting somewhat wider interest.  This
 month, for example, MicroGeneSys Inc. said it is beginning
 human safety trials of a vaccine based on a core protein,
 though not the one on which HGP-30 is based.  MicroGeneSys, a
 closely held West Haven, Conn., company, already is testing
 in people a vaccine based on an envelope protein.  The company
 says that researchers plan eventually to test core and
 envelope proteins in combination.

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