Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, January 5, 1999
Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer
Both new strategies, summarized in the latest issue of the journal Nature Medicine, are designed to circumvent the problem of drug- resistant strains of HIV, the emergence of which could neutralize even the most potent anti-viral AIDS treatments now in use.
One method, reported by scientists at Washington University in St. Louis, uses a novel "Trojan horse" scheme to insert designer proteins inside virtually any cell. The proteins include a so-called transduction molecule that is used to gain entry to the cell, coupled with a poisonous protein that is activated only when HIV is present.
The idea is to induce infected cells to commit suicide while leaving uninfected cells alone. A privately held company in La Jolla, Idun Pharmaceuticals Inc., has licensed the technology and hopes to apply it not only for HIV, but to fight such other infectious diseases as hepatitis C and malaria.
Researchers hope to formulate the proteins into a spray that people could inhale, avoiding the problem of intravenous delivery.
Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called it "a very interesting technique," but noted there is no way to tell if it will work in patients.
Several years of tests will be needed to prove "it can do in the human body what it does in the test tube," warned Kevin Tomaselli, vice president of science and technology at Idun Pharmaceuticals.
Doubts also greeted results of cell-therapy experiments carried out by researchers at the University of Washington.
The scientists took immune cells out of HIV-infected patients, allowed the cells to multiply in the laboratory, then returned them to the same patients. The expanded cell colonies were tagged with a special tracer molecule to show what happened to them.
Results showed the transplanted T cells migrated to the lymph nodes and appeared to be functional virus- killers. That outcome offers important proof that "autologous" cell therapy -- in which patients' own cells are removed, treated and reinjected -- might help combat AIDS.
The problem is such therapies, if perfected, promise to be "very expensive and logistically complicated," Fauci said.
Predictions are risky, he noted, but chances are the approach would not be used much beyond a few very rare circumstances.
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