Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1989. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Miami Herald, - Tuesday, October 17 1989
Stephen Smith - Herald Staff Writer
That's what tests involving a small group of AIDS patients have shown at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington.
But the president of the Connecticut drug company, in Fort Lauderdale for a convention of AIDS researchers, offered this caution: VaxSyn HIV-1 can't be called an AIDS cure.
"We've been telling people not to overstate what's here," said Franklin Volvovitz, president of the pharmaceutical company MicroGeneSys. "We want to be careful that we don't create a false sense of optimism in people who are infected.
"Before we started, people said, 'Gee, people are infected. What can a vaccine do?' "
So far, researchers have found, the VaxSyn vaccine might be able to do this:
* Spawn antibodies that can improve patients' health and help them battle the disease.
* Protect the white blood cells that the HIV virus targets like a bomb. Those cells are vital in the body's battle to stave off infections that ravage AIDS patients.
Dr. Robert Redfield, a researcher at Walter Reed, presented findings Monday to a meeting of the National Cooperative Vaccine Development Groups for AIDS, a consortium of AIDS researchers.
He told the group that he wanted to "make people enthusiastic" about the possibility of using vaccines to treat AIDS patients.
Tests on VaxSyn started in April at Walter Reed. A second phase of tests using more patients is to begin in January.
Don't expect doctors to begin prescribing the vaccine soon. "I think in a couple of years, we'll know whether this is going to work or not," Volvovitz said.
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