Associated Press - December 12, 1986

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, said Thursday that the discovery may point to a way of using the immune system that is attacked in AIDS -- acquired immune deficiency syndrome -- to counterattack the disease without using toxic antiviral drugs.

In a report in the Dec. 19 issue of the journal Science, a team led by Dr. Jay A. Levy said a subgroup of white blood cells called suppressor T-cells appear able to control the virus in cell cultures by keeping it from reproducing.

The researchers said these cells appear to be at work in several patients who have been infected with the virus for up to four years who either have not gotten AIDS or whose disease seems to be in remission.

If the suppressor T-cells prove to control the virus in humans, the researchers said, it may be possible to boost the number of these cells to stop the virus from reproducing and arrest the progress of AIDS.

"This is the first indication that individuals have in themselves a means of controlling the virus," Levy said. "This discovery could be the first step toward an effective therapy for AIDS, using a person's own immune cells rather than drugs that are toxic to the body."

"The drama of this observation is that we are finding people who are antibody-positive, meaning they are infected, and we can't get virus from their blood and they seem to improve all by themselves," Levy continued.

"We now have a mechanism that could explain this."

The AIDS virus attacks another group of T-cells, called helper T-cells, which govern the other components of the immune system. The virus penetrates the helper T-cells, reproduces and destroys its host cells as it spreads to other cells.

In this way, the AIDS virus, variously known as HTLV-3, HIV or LAV, cripples the disease-fighting immune system, leaving sufferers vulnerable to numerous infections and cancers that lead to death.

More than 28,000 Americans have been diagnosed with the incurable infectious disease, half of whom have died.

Levy, with Drs. Christopher Walker, Dewey Moody and Daniel Stites, found that suppressor T-cells, whose normal job is controlling the production of antibodies by other cells, appear to emit an unknown substance that keeps the virus from reproducing after invading the helper cells.

When certain suppressor T-cells that have a protein on their surface called CD8 were removed from blood cultures, the virus started to grow in the remaining blood cells, the scientists reported.

But when the suppressor T-cells were put back into the cultures, reproduction of the virus was suppressed, they said. The suppressor cells do not destroy the virus or kill the host cells.

Levy speculated that suppressor T-cells could be removed from an infected person's body, grown in large numbers in a laboratory and returned to the patient to continue arresting the disease.

Suppressor T-cells normally make a form of interferon, proteins that regulate the immune system and sometimes work against viruses. However, the report said, the type of interferon made by these suppressor cells has been shown in other studies to have no effect on the AIDS virus.

"We want to find out what the CD8 cells are making, perhaps another kind of interferon or something else," Levy said. "Is it new and, if so, can we make it and use it as an antiviral?"

The next step is designing human tests and recruiting patients for a small trial to see if the test tube findings prove true in the human body, he said.

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