Subject: Jonas Salk Offers AIDS Researchers Another Approach
Date: Published: 7/21/92 (49 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Technology & Health:
    Jonas Salk Offers
    AIDS Researchers
    Another Approach
    ---
    By Marilyn Chase
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    AMSTERDAM -- Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine and is
 working on another to fight AIDS, challenged AIDS experts meeting
 here to rethink their vaccine strategies.
    So far, most scientists and companies are working on an AIDS
 vaccine that would spark high levels of protective antibodies, which
 are infection-fighting particles produced by white blood cells.  But
 Dr. Salk says he thinks that's the wrong path.
    Instead of antibodies, Dr. Salk says, patients need a great deal
 of immune cells to kill the AIDS virus that hides inside infected
 human blood cells.  Therefore, he says, researchers should be working
 on bolstering the body's immune cells.  While antibodies kill the
 free-floating AIDS virus in the blood, the immune cells most
 effectively attack the AIDS virus by targeting it inside host cells
 before it has a chance to spread.
    Dr. Salk bases his view on studies showing several groups of
 people who successfully threw off the AIDS virus after exposure.
 These people, including babies of infected mothers and health-care
 workers who accidentally stuck themselves with dirty needles, had no
 antibodies to the AIDS virus in their blood -- but they had plenty
 of immune cells.
    This isn't the first time the silver-haired vaccine pioneer has
 ventured out on a limb with his AIDS theories.  Several other vaccine
 experts in the audience here yesterday were skeptical, and they
 questioned Dr. Salk's lack of first-hand data to support his new
 strategy.
    Still, Dr. Salk says he hopes to achieve this purely cell-based
 immunity by using "exceptionally small" doses of vaccine.
    For now, he also says he'll stick with the AIDS vaccine he has
 been developing, which is made from an AIDS virus that has been
 killed.  He cautions, however, that "it has to be established"
 whether this vaccine design will be the ideal tool for his new
 strategy.  He says his new work is being backed by the company he
 co-founded, Immune Response Corp., La Jolla, Calif.

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