Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia, Inc. - Thursday, 12 December 1996, 13:52 P.M.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology biologist David Baltimore will try to jump-start the frustrating search for a vaccine, which most scientists believe is the only way the global epidemic can ever be brought under control.

"David Baltimore has agreed to lead the AIDS vaccine research committee and to provide key advisory expertise in restructured and reinvigorated NIH vaccine efforts," Dr. William Paul, director of the NIH's Office of Aids Research, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Early in the AIDS epidemic, many hoped that a vaccine would be available within a few years. But AIDS is unlike any other virus, and the blazing hopes for a vaccine became instead a trail of false starts.

But in the past two years or so, scientists have made huge leaps in understanding the basic mechanics of how the virus works, and have gained insight into understanding how it causes disease, a process known as pathogenesis.

Scientists, including Baltimore, are not predicting when a vaccine will finally become available. But there is consensus that now is a good time to make a fresh start.

"I'm not making any predictions" about the timetable for a vaccine, Baltimore said by telephone from his lab at MIT. "But the data on the natural history of the virus and pathogenesis has been strong and will be useful in (discovering) what kind of vaccine will be valuable."

Most scientists and public health experts believe a vaccine is the only way to bring an end to the global scourge, especially in poorer nations of Africa and Asia that cannot afford the costly new cocktail of drugs that can suppress the virus in some patients and prolong their lives.

The search for a top-notch outside scientist was one of the key recommendations last year of a panel that evaluated NIH's AIDS programs. Arnold Levine, the Princeton biologist who led that review, said Baltimore was a superb choice.

"His experience in virology, immunology and the area of molecular biology will make him uniquely able to tackle this problem," Levine told Reuters. "There are very few people trained in these interdisciplinary areas."

Though he is revered by many colleagues, Baltimore's career took a beating a few years ago when he loyally defended a former student accused of scientific fraud. She was eventually exonerated, but not until after years of investigations, congressional hearings, and blistering fights that forced Baltimore to resign the presidency of Rockefeller University in New York, one of the top U.S. science jobs.

Baltimore said he will divide his time between MIT and the NIH, and will start with a review of the existing programs.

"The first step is to recruit a committee and to do a large-scale evaluation of the vaccine program as it stands now," he said. "Then we'll think about what other steps might provbide new avenues to vaccine development."

Levine believes that the false starts of past research will prove to be the groundwork for future advances.

"We benefited by our failures in our past. We tried the easy experiments, the ones that worked with other viruses, the ones that should have been a straight line. And we learned that this is a more complicated problem," he said.
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