Wall Street Journal - September 7, 2001
Mark Schoofs, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Wyeth Lederle Vaccines, a unit of American Home Products Corp., has acquired the intellectual-property rights to the Yale vaccine and is conducting further animal tests. Company scientists said the approach pioneered by the Yale team could also have applications to other diseases besides AIDS, such as childhood respiratory illnesses. Wyeth Lederle, with headquarters in Radnor, Pa., wouldn't disclose the amount involved in the deal.

Both the company and academic researchers stressed that the vaccine is a long way from human trials -- perhaps as many as five years. Still, "After a long interval of difficulty understanding HIV and HIV immune responses," said Stephen Udem, vice president of viral vaccine research at Wyeth, "we are very excited."

Nina and John Rose, a research scientist and a professor at the Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn., had never before collaborated. A little over two years ago, Ms. Rose joined her husband's research project and helped develop an approach that involved creating a vaccine by hooking genes from the AIDS virus onto a different virus, called vesicular stomatitis virus, or VSV, that was genetically altered to make it unable to cause disease. VSV is an animal virus that causes disease in cows, horses, and pigs. The modified VSV replicates inside the body, where its cargo of AIDS-virus genes fools the animal's immune system into mounting a defense against the disease.

The Roses' vaccine -- like other new experimental ones being developed separately by research teams at Merck & Co.'s laboratories in La Jolla, Calif.; Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.; Atlanta's Emory University; and the National Institutes of Health -- doesn't prevent monkeys from getting infected with the AIDS virus. Instead, the monkeys have the virus in their body, but the vaccine boosts the immune system enough to keep it in check and thereby prevent the onset of disease. This type of immunization is being called "partial protection." In the past few years, the AIDS research field has tilted steeply toward this kind of a vaccine because it has been so difficult for scientists to create a vaccine that can prevent the establishment of infection in monkeys.

The Yale team presented its findings in Friday's issue of the journal Cell and Thursday at a high-profile scientific conference here called AIDS Vaccine 2001.

The meeting, which had as its keynote speaker Rwandan President Paul Kagame, stressed the enormous need for an AIDS vaccine in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than a fifth of adults in some countries are infected with HIV. But while the disease there continues taking its toll, researchers here voiced strong optimism on scientific progress toward an AIDS vaccine, partly because of very recent studies such as the one from the Roses' team at Yale.

In their research, the Roses vaccinated seven monkeys, and then exposed them to SIV, the simian cousin of HIV. All seven of the vaccinated monkeys contained the AIDS virus and didn't get sick, whereas six out of seven control monkeys progressed to full-blown AIDS. Several of the other new vaccine candidates, while using different viruses to carry the SIV genes, have obtained similarly impressive results in monkey tests.

The Yale vaccine has some potential advantages, including that it wouldn't need to be injected but could be administered in the nose by drops or a spray.

Indeed, research by Wyeth shows that the vaccine works better when given to monkeys through the nose. Still, VSV has never been used in a human vaccine, and because it is a live virus, it will have to pass stringent safety reviews.

There is some scientific concern about the strain of the AIDS virus used in the monkey tests, a technical issue that could have significant ramifications. Some scientists argue that the one used in the tests might not be an accurate simulation of HIV in humans, and they favor the use of other strains of the virus. They caution that the tests could raise false hopes.

Several of the new vaccines are either in early human trials or being readied for such tests, which will demonstrate whether the vaccines are safe and actually work in people. Merck said earlier this year it is conducting safety tests in people. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is working with the laboratory of AIDS researcher Harriet Robinson at Emory University to prepare human trials of a vaccine developed there.

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