
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 2, 1990                   TAG: 9006020110
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

AIDS VACCINE SUCCESS CLAIMED

A California biotechnology company announced Friday that its scientists had successfully immunized two chimpanzees against infection with one strain of the AIDS virus.

Such results, as well as similar successful tests of vaccines against AIDS-like viruses in monkeys, demonstrate that a vaccine to protect humans is possible, scientists say. But many AIDS vaccine researchers believe that it will take at least another decade to develop a safe and effective vaccine for widespread use.

The company, Genentech of South San Francisco, claimed that their experiment, which has yet to be published in a medical journal, "for the first time demonstrates that vaccination can provide protection from human immunodeficiency virus infection."

But in recent months two other research groups - one at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the other at Immuno AG in Vienna, Austria, have made the same claim.

When informed by a reporter of those other unpublished claims, Genentech spokesman Jack Murphy said, "Perhaps we should withdraw our claim to being first."

The Genentech experiment, conducted in collaboration with the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research of San Antonio, Texas, involved three chimpanzees. Two were immunized with a genetically engineered AIDS vaccine made from a protein on the surface of the AIDS virus, known as gp 120. The other served as a control.

The three chimpanzees were then given the same laboratory strain of the AIDS virus from which the protein was derived, the company said. The unvaccinated control animal became infected within seven weeks. But after six months, the two immunized chimps remained free of infection.

The success provides "encouragement that an AIDS vaccine may one day be developed, but work on this project, if successful, will take several years," Genentech spokesmen said.

The company added that it "is working toward the goal of initiating human clinical trials" but provided no specifics.

Genentech said that it announced its results before their scheduled publication in the British scientific journal Nature June 14 because of a shareholders' vote scheduled for next Friday on a proposed merger with Roche Holding Ltd. of Switzerland.

by CNB