The Wall Street Journal - 9 August 1996
Michael Waldholz, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

A report being released today covers research at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York on a particular type of gene. Typically, the gene makes a protein that acts like a gateway through which HIV enters, infects and destroys white blood cells, causing AIDS.

The Aaron Diamond scientists report in today's issue of the journal Cell that people with a rare variant of the gene make a version of the protein that doesn't allow the virus to slip into target cells.

The Aaron Diamond laboratory is one of five research groups that in June announced the first discovery of the protein, called CKR-5. The research groups found that in order for HIV to penetrate a cell and carry out its devastation, it must first latch onto two protein receptors that jut out from the surface of white blood cells, called T-cells. One of these receptors, called CD4, has been known for years. Scientists knew other receptors existed, but until this year they were unable to identify them.

The newest findings suggest that the CKR-5 protein provides a second critical passageway for the virus into a T-cell. Led by Nathaniel Landau, the Aaron Diamond lab investigated the makeup of the CKR-5 protein in two men who reported having frequent sex with HIV-infected partners, but had no sign of infection. Upon analysis it turned out the men were born with a form of the T-cell protein distinctly different from the form that exists in people who are infected.

"These people came to us asking a simple question, `How is it that I'm still standing?'" said Richard Koup, a co-author of the report. "They knew they were somehow different. And they were right."

By analyzing blood samples from a wide number of donors, the researchers predicted that only about 1% of people of Western European heritage carry the version of the CKR-5 protein that resists infection. In a separate report to be published later this month in the journal Nature, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania said they found similar evidence suggesting that only about 1% of Caucasians are born with the infection-resistant version of the protein.

Both research groups suggested in their reports that a drug that could inhibit the activity of the common version of the T-cell receptor might prove to be a powerful way of blocking HIV from spreading from infected cells to uninfected cells in people exposed to HIV. The Aaron Diamond Center is a private research facility affiliated with Rockefeller University.

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