San Francisco Chronicle (SF) - FRIDAY, December 16, 1994 Edition: FINAL Section: News Page: A1 Word Count: 727
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

In a cautious report being published today in the journal Science, researchers say they have isolated unique fragments of genetic material from the KS lesions of people with AIDS that are strikingly similar to the genes of the human herpesvirus that causes mononucleosis and some lymph cancers.

In an interview yesterday, the researchers said their discovery provides the "leading candidate" that might lead to the long-sought agent responsible for a disorder that strikes more than one-fourth of all gay and bisexual men infected by HIV, the AIDS virus.

If the herpesvirus proves to be the cause of KS, the discovery finally could lead to an early diagnostic test based on antibodies to the virus and ultimately to the development of anti-viral treatments for Kaposi's sarcoma, they said.

The researchers have not taken the crucial step of isolating the entire virus that they believe exists. Nor do they say that their virus-like genetic material is in fact the cause of the cancer that develops on the skin and inside the mouth and throat of so many AIDS patients.

The first report on the discovery is from Dr. Yuan Chang, a pathologist at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons, and her husband, Dr. Patrick Moore, an epidemiologist at the university's School of Public Health.

"The DNA sequences we found contain portions of at least three different genes that are unique to the herpesvirus," Chang said in a telephone interview.

Because scientists at five other research centers already have duplicated their gene work, Chang and Moore are now hot on the track toward isolating the entire virus by probing more KS lesions from AIDS patients who have died.

In San Francisco, Dr. Jay A. Levy, a University of California virologist and co-discoverer of HIV, called the report from Columbia "excellent and very exciting work."

It should rapidly stimulate even more intensive research into the possibility that viruses do indeed cause KS as well as many other cancers, in which infectious agents have long been suspected, Levy said.

He likened the findings by Chang and Moore to the 1988 discovery of the Hepatitis C virus by Michael Houghton at Chiron Corp. in Emeryville.

Like KS, Hepatitis C is also widespread among people with AIDS and causes often-fatal liver damage. Less than two years after that virus was discovered using the most advanced techniques in molecular biology, Chiron scientists developed an antibody screening test for the virus, and that test is now in use by blood banks and medical centers.

At the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Dr. Harold Jaffe, a noted authority on Kaposi's sarcoma, also called the report on a possible KS virus "tremendously exciting work." At this point, he told the journal Science, "we can't say it's the etiologic agent, but I think it's a very good candidate."

In their detailed report in Science, Chang and Moore say they detected the unique DNA sequences of the virus-like genes in 93 percent of KS lesions taken from 27 AIDS patients who had died. They also used their techniques successfully to diagnose KS in 11 unmarked tissue samples sent to them from scientists at the University of Pittsburgh.

The DNA fragments they found in the KS lesions are most similar to gene sequences that occur in a group of microbes called gamma herpesviruses, which are thought to be sexually transmitted, Chang and Moore said.

They noted that the closest viral relative to the discovered DNA is the Epstein-Barr virus, which causes mononucleosis and is also believed to be responsible for the tumors called Burkitt's lymphoma. That cancer strikes hard at children in sub-Saharan Africa who are free of the human immunodeficiency virus, but it is even more widespread among youngsters who are also infected with the AIDS virus, Moore said. Until the AIDS epidemic emerged in 1981, Kaposi's sarcoma was known as a rare and slow-growing tumor, usually seen only in elderly men of eastern Mediterranean ancestry and in African youngsters. Now, however, KS lesions eventually appear in 25 percent to 50 percent of all gay or bisexual men infected with the AIDS virus.

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