Subject: AIDS Virus Finding Boosts Credibility Of NIH's Gallo in Dispute With French 
Date: Published: 2/28/91 (83 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Technology & Medicine:
    AIDS Virus Finding Boosts Credibility
    Of NIH's Gallo in Dispute With French
    ----
    By Marilyn Chase
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    A new puzzle piece came to light in the persistent mystery
 surrounding origins of the AIDS virus, first identified by
 Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute in France, and later
 by Robert Gallo at the National Institutes of Health.
    A striking resemblance between the French virus named LAV
 and the U. S. virus called IIIB, whose genetic fingerprints
 are 98% identical, has led critics to question whether Dr. 
 Gallo's work was based on a virus stolen from the French or
 contaminated by the French virus.
    But this week in the journal Nature, Dr. Gallo and one of
 the original Pasteur team members, Jean-Claude Chermann,
 report that the earliest French virus samples sent to the
 U. S. in 1983 are genetically distinct from the U. S. virus and
 the later French LAV strain.  The finding appears to give a
 circumstantial boost to Dr. Gallo's oft-assailed credibility,
 though it raises almost as many questions as it resolves.
    This original French virus sample, taken from the lymph
 nodes of a French acquired immune deficiency syndrome patient
 identified by the initials BRU, was recently unearthed from
 frozen virus samples at NIH and subjected to analysis by
 polymerase chain reaction technology.  PCR multiplied tiny
 samples of the virus's genetic code for analysis and found
 that the 1983 samples were 10% different from both the U. S. 
 virus and the French LAV. 
    At the least, the report indicates that any mixup in virus
 samples happened well after the first shipments of virus from
 Pasteur to the U. S. However, it doesn't explain why later
 genetic sequences are identical.  Still, the finding was
 swiftly hailed as a vindication by Dr. Gallo's attorney
 Joseph Onek and by his co-workers.
    "This reaffirms the basic honesty of the scientists
 involved," said Howard Streicher, an NIH associate of Dr. 
 Gallo.  However, Dr. Streicher cautioned that "in terms of how
 viruses differ and why, it doesn't change a thing."
    In Marseilles, France, a more guarded interpretation was
 offered by Dr. Chermann, who now heads AIDS virus research at
 Inserm, France's national institute of health and medical
 research.  Asked whether the paper definitively exonerates his
 U. S. counterpart, he said, "This is a scientific paper, not a
 polemical one."
    Dr. Chermann said he believes genetic differences between
 the 1983 French virus from BRU and subsequent viruses stem
 from the fact that the BRU virus was grown in fresh blood
 lymphocytes, while others were cultured in continuous cell
 lines.  Such cell lines are often derived from cancer cells,
 which may alter the virus growing within them, he noted.
    "My conclusion is that we shouldn't use continuous cell
 lines to study characteristics of the virus," he said, though
 he granted it's essential for mass production of the virus to
 create blood tests for AIDS and other diagnostic products.
    It was royalties from the AIDS blood test, patented by the
 Gallo group, which for years fueled the dispute over origins
 of the virus, and poisoned relationships between the French
 and U. S. teams.  Despite a formal settlement of their dispute
 several years ago, with agreement to share the royalties,
 newspaper reports and congressional staff probes have kept
 the dispute alive and led to demands that NIH itself
 investigate Dr. Gallo.
    That NIH investigation recently found that Dr. Gallo had
 no motive for theft, since he had virus of his own to grow.
 But NIH continues to probe unresolved questions of the
 virus's origins and how LAV and IIIB came by their
 similarity.
    Dr. Gallo, for his part, issued a written statement
 yesterday saying the Nature paper confirms both the U. S. and
 French contributions to AIDS, while confirming "they were
 indeed distinct viruses."

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