Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1989. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press - Thursday January 19, 1989
The animal research provides the first clear evidence outside the test tube that the strategy has a chance of slowing and perhaps arresting the disease in people.
Even if the treatment works as well in people as it does in monkeys, it will not cure acquired immune deficiency syndrome. But it might make life better for victims of the virus.
Human Tests
Doctors recently began testing the drug, CD-4, on people infected with the AIDS virus, but the results will not be known for several weeks or months.
"This approach looks very promising for AIDS," said Dr. Norman L. Letvin, senior author of the monkey study published in today's issue of the British journal Nature.
CD-4 is designed to be a decoy for HIV, the AIDS virus, deflecting it from healthy blood cells that it takes over and kills. CD-4 is a natural molecule to which the AIDS virus is attracted on the surface of some blood cells.
The treatment cannot wipe out the virus when it is hidden inside the body's cells. However, if CD-4 works as researchers hope, loose viruses in the bloodstream will latch onto the molecule instead of new cells.
Harvard Study
The latest research, conducted at the Harvard-affiliated New England Regional Primate Research Center, showed that the drug dramatically reduced levels of a closely related virus in rhesus monkeys.
"This is the first evidence in vivo (in a living animal) that it has anti-viral effects with chronic administration in a relevant animal model," said Dr. Robert Schooley of Massachusetts General Hospital, who is in charge of human testing of CD-4 made by Biogen, a biotechnology firm in Cambridge, Mass.
"That still leaves the question of whether or not there will be parallel positive effects in humans. But it does increase the enthusiasm and the likelihood one would push on with more extensive studies."
"What one would predict on the basis of these monkey studies," Letvin said, "is that if the drug is well tolerated in humans, there is every reason to hope that patients should live significantly longer and feel significantly better."
Researchers tested CD-4 on six monkeys. Two were healthy, and the drug had no adverse effects on them. The other four had varying stages of disease.
Virus Largely Disappears
The infected animals received daily injections of CD-4 for 50 days. The virus in their blood and bone marrow largely disappeared within two weeks of the start of treatment but returned after the treatment stopped.
CD-4 has been given so far to 10 people with AIDS or pre-AIDS illness by doctors at Massachusetts General, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and Stanford University. Human testing also has begun with CD-4 made by Genentech in South San Francisco.
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