Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1984. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Wall Street Journal - October 5, 1984
Marilyn Chase, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
Dr. Samuel Broder, head of the clinical oncology program at the National Cancer Institute, said that so far, two patients are receiving suramin, an anti-parasitic drug made by Bayer AG of West Germany, to determine whether the test-tube success will carry over into clinical use.
"I want to emphasize that we aren't as yet making any therapeutic claim," Dr. Broder said in an interview. "Sometimes things are effective in the test tube but fail in humans." AIDS destroys the immune system of its victims, who usually die of rare cancers like Kaposi's sarcoma or other so-called "opportunistic infections."
In the test tube, Dr. Broder said "the drug can inhibit infectivity and replication" of HTLV-III -- a strain of human T-cell leukemia virus recently identified as a probable cause of AIDS -- and also can protect a normal population of T-cells that otherwise would be killed by the virus.
The National Cancer Institute's suramin trials are scheduled for publication in the Oct. 12 edition of the journal Science. Dr. Broder reported that the drug suramin works by blocking an enzyme the virus needs to reproduce.
Suramin isn't a new drug. It has been used since the 1920s against a form of African sleeping sickness. The drug isn't available in the U. S., except as an experimental treatment for a certain type of worm infection.
The NIH study initially is limited to AIDS patients with an early form of Kaposi's sarcoma "because it may turn out to be too toxic to give to patients with advanced AIDS," Dr. Broder said.
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