Subject: Hoffman-La Roche Reverses Its Plans For AIDS Drug as Test Shows Promise 
Date: Published: 12/20/91 (54 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Technology & Medicine:
    Hoffman-La Roche Reverses Its Plans
    For AIDS Drug as Test Shows Promise
    ----
    By Michael Waldholz
    Staff Reporter

    Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. said it has renewed its interest in
 developing for itself an experimental drug against AIDS that
 it previously said it would license to a co-developer.
    Roche, the Nutley, N. J., unit of the Swiss drug maker
 Roche Holding Ltd., said it would soon begin a second phase
 of human tests for its drug, a so-called TAT inhibitor, which
 appears to block replication of the AIDS virus in a manner
 that is different from other drugs being used or tested
 against AIDS.  
    The Roche announcement yesterday came just one day prior
 to the publication of the first laboratory evidence that the
 TAT inhibitor prevents the reproduction of the human
 immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, in cells already infected.
 The report is being released in today's issue of the journal
 Science.
    Last May, Roche said it would seek a co-developer to
 handle the bulk of research into the TAT inhibitor because
 its resources were stretched by work it was doing on two
 other AIDS drugs.  At the time, AIDS activists and researchers
 pressed Roche to continue carrying out a small human safety
 study of the drug it was sponsoring at Johns Hopkins
 University.
    In a statement yesterday, Roche said it decided to keep
 the TAT inhibitor for itself and begin more extensive human
 testing as a result of several factors, including recent
 reports that another class of experimental drugs under
 development by Merck & Co. and Boehringer Ingelheim Corp. had
 run into problems.
    Those companies reported in November that the AIDS virus
 developed resistance to a promising class of drugs called
 reverse transcriptase inhibitors.  Both companies say the
 resistance problem is a setback but hope to continue testing
 those drugs in combination with AZT, the anti-viral medicine
 for AIDS developed and sold by Burroughs Wellcome Co. 
    Roche is also developing a drug called DDC that is similar
 to AZT.  
    Roche's TAT inhibitor, a distant chemical cousin to the
 company's tranquilizer, Valium, blocks a protein used by the
 virus to reproduce its genetic material.

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