The New York Times - July 13, 1983
Lawrence K. Altman

The study, which began two weeks ago, will involve four patients using interleukin-2, at a cost of $125,000 per patient. As of yesterday, interleukin-2, which has shown infection-fighting capacities in test-tube experiments with cells from AIDS victims, has been administered to three patients, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci of the health institutes said in an interview.

As is normal in such trials, the tests are aimed, first of all, at learning whether interleukin-2 can be given safely to humans. In addition, the study will attempt to learn whether the substance has any beneficial effect on the immune systems of AIDS patients, and how much of it would be needed to achieve that effect.

AIDS is an acronym for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, a disease characterized by severe damage to the immune system, making its victims susceptible to a wide variety of uncommon infections and a rare type of cancer. Most of the 1,700 cases reported this year in the United States have been homosexuals or intravenous drug users.

Test-Tube Experiments Cited

Because interleukin-2 is so costly, the trial is being kept very small, Dr. Fauci said. It was undertaken after test-tube experiments by Dr. Fauci and other researchers at the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration showed that interleukin-2 enhanced the infection-fighting activity of certain cells in blood from AIDS patients. Results of the study were presented yesterday at a virology meeting in East Lansing, Mich., by Dr. Alain H. Rook, a researcher for the food and drug agency.

The test-tube study was designed to determine the effects of interleukin-2 and interferon, another naturally occurring substance derived from white blood cells, on the immunity produced in cells from AIDS patients and healthy volunteers. Although the substances are similar, they act in significantly different ways on immune cells.

A second aim of the study was to determine the ability of cells treated with interferon and interleukin-2 to destroy cells infected with cytomegalovirus, which occurs with extraordinarily high frequency among AIDS patients and is suspected of contributing to the deaths of many such patients.

Researchers have shown that AIDS patients have a pronounced deficiency in the activity of certain types of lymphocytes: so-called "natural killer" cells and virus specific killer cells. Laboratory Study Described

In the laboratory study described at the Michigan meeting, by the lymphocytes from six homosexuals who had AIDS and an active cytomegalovirus infection, and those from uninfected heterosexuals were incubated with interleukin-2 or interferon. As expected, both interferon and interleukin-2 enhanced natural killer cell activity of the lymphocytes from normal subjects, and these lymphocytes exhibited virus specific killer cell activity without treatment, according to Dr. Rook's report.

Interferon, however, enhanced natural killer cell activity in blood from only one AIDS patient and failed to produce changes in virus specific killer cells in in blood from any of the AIDS patients. But exposure to interleukin-2 significantly enhanced both the natural killer and virus specific killer cell activity of the lymphocytes from all six patients.

Dr. Gerald V. Quinnan Jr. of the F.D.A. said in an interview that his colleagues on the research team had tested several types of interferon, as well as interleukin-2,in what scientists call reconstitution studies, to see which substance restored activity of the immunologically impaired cells from AIDS patients. Only interleukin-2 restored such activity, Dr. Quinnan said.

Dr. Edward N. Brandt Jr., Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, and other scientists said that the work might turn out to be a step forward in understanding how AIDS can be fought. But they cautioned against premature speculation that interleukin would be a quick cure for AIDS.

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