AEGiS-WSJ: Peptide T Holds Promise In Fight Against AIDS

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Peptide T Holds Promise In Fight Against AIDS

Wall Street Journal - September 29, 2003
Marilyn Chase, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

One of the most stubborn problems in treating HIV/AIDS is the difficulty of attacking the virus where it hides in silently infected cells. These cells, sometimes called latently infected cells, contain a reservoir of virus that fuels the disease but remains out of reach of powerful antiviral drug cocktails.

Now in a small human pilot study, researchers at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., reported preliminary encouraging results using a nasal spray of a synthetic protein fragment called Peptide T.

The study involved 11 patients at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco who were long infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, but hadn't developed full blown AIDS -- a special group known as "long-term nonprogressors." The men all received daily nasal sprays of Peptide T for as long as 32 weeks. Although the blood levels of virus were unchanged, the researchers said that the level of virus hiding in cells called monocytes was significantly reduced.

Michael Ruff, the senior author of the Georgetown report published in the current issue of the journal Peptides, said it isn't known whether Peptide T can one day complement current antiviral treatments.

However, Dr. Ruff said, "there is enough evidence of clinical activity here to push Peptide T research to the next level to see if it really can serve as a valuable weapon against stealth stashes of virus."

Peptide T was co-discovered by Dr. Ruff and his Georgetown colleague and co-author Candace Pert. Despite reports of intriguing activity dating from the 1980s, the compound hasn't yet found a role in standard AIDS antiviral regimens.

The next step, added study co-author Frank Ruscetti of the National Cancer Institute, should be to conduct placebo-controlled trials of Peptide T in a larger and more representative cross section of people with HIV who have higher blood levels of virus than the 11 people in the pilot study.

Flushing out the hidden virus so it can be attacked by antiviral drugs has long been an elusive goal of AIDS researchers. Early studies were beset with fears that flushing virus into the open would also increase virus production and thus risk making the infection worse. Recently, however, a group at the University of California at Los Angeles reported a promising study in mice using the combination of two drugs, interleukin-7 and prostratin.

Write to Marilyn Chase at marilyn.chase@wsj.com

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