Subject: Potential Drug Is Reported for Treating AIDS-Related Kaposi's Skin Cancer 
Date: Published: 3/13/92 (79 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Technology & Medicine:
    Potential Drug Is Reported for Treating
    AIDS-Related Kaposi's Skin Cancer
    ----
    By Jerry E. Bishop
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    A potential new drug for the treatment of a lethal
 AIDS-related skin cancer was reported by a Japanese-American
 team of researchers.
    A report on the new experimental drug for Kaposi's sarcoma
 was published alongside four other reports describing new
 insights into the biology of the cancer.
    Rarely seen before 1979, Kaposi's sarcoma was thought to
 afflict only some elderly men and others who might have a
 weakened immune system.  In 1979, a New York dermatologist,
 Alvin Friedman-Kien, diagnosed a particularly aggressive form
 of the strange skin cancer in several young homosexual men.
 It was one of the first tip-offs that an epidemic of acquired
 immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, had broken out.
    Difficult to treat, the disease responds to both
 interferon and some existing anti-cancer drugs.  But they are
 also toxic and can produce severe side effects.
    The new experimental drug was developed by Daiichi
 Pharmaceutical Co. of Tokyo.  It is composed of extracts of
 the cell wall of the "Arthrobacter" bacterium.  The
 experimental drug is known as SP-PG (for sulfated
 polysaccharide peptidoglycan).
    In a report in this week's issue of Science, a
 Japanese-American team headed by noted U. S. cancer researcher
 Robert C. Gallo, of the National Cancer Institute, described
 test-tube and mouse experiments hinting that SP-PG might stop
 the growth of Kaposi's sarcomas with little toxicity to the
 patient.
    Daiichi and NCI said they have agreed to develop SP-PG for
 testing in AIDS patients with Kaposi's sarcoma.
    In a statement, Dr. Gallo said the researchers had started
 off looking for compounds that might stop incipient tumors
 like those of Kaposi's sarcoma from forming new blood vessels
 that permitted the tumors to grow.  "Daiichi had data in the
 literature showing that SP-PG interfered with blood-vessel
 formation," Dr. Gallo said.
    The new research isn't involved in the controversy that
 has swirled around Dr. Gallo for the last two to three years.
 This controversy is centered on the question of whether Dr. 
 Gallo and his colleagues independently discovered the virus
 that causes AIDS, or whether they obtained the virus from
 French researchers.
    The new drug was found to stop the growth of Kaposi's
 sarcoma cells cultured in the test tube and to stop these
 cancer cells from inducing the growth of new blood vessels in
 the membranes of chicken eggs, according to the report by Dr. 
 Gallo, Dr. Shuji Nakamura of the University of Southern
 California, and the Daiichi researchers.
    When SP-PG was tested in immune-deficient mice that were
 injected with Kaposi's sarcoma cells, the drug seemed to
 prevent both the growth of blood vessels and the leakage of
 fluid from existing blood vessels.  One symptom of Kaposi's
 sarcoma in its early stages is edema or swelling caused by
 fluid leaking through the blood vessels.
    In these experiments, there was little evidence that SP-PG
 damaged normal cells, suggesting that it might have far fewer
 adverse effects than drugs currently used to treat Kaposi's
 sarcoma.
    In related reports, three teams of researchers described
 experiments in which a substance long thought to inhibit the
 growth of cancer cells actually promoted the growth of
 Kaposi's sarcoma.  One team of scientists is from Immunex
 Corp. and another team of American and Japanese scientists
 includes two from Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical
 Research Institute in Seattle.

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