THIS WEEK ON 
SCIENCE FRIDAY...

Science Friday > Archives > 1997 > October > October 24, 1997

Hour One: AIDS Update:
Clinical trial of an AIDS vaccine and new targets for drug treatment.

AIDS researchers haven't found a cure yet, but they're making headway. In the past week, a new HIV vaccine trial was approved, a group has announced progress in blocking the virus from attacking the cells of the immune system, and a new hormone has been found that will help researchers understand why the virus progresses differently in different people, a mystery that has puzzled researchers for the past ten years.

In Memphis, Tennessee, doctors at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital have been given permission by the FDA to start HIV vaccine trials on people. At this point, the trials, using a piece of protein from the coat on the surface of the virus, are just to test whether or not the vaccine is safe - not to test whether or not the vaccine actually prevents HIV transmission.

Other groups are researching various protein receptors on the surface of immune cells. HIV attacks T cells, their favorite immune system targets, by using the receptors on the surface of the T-cell to dock with, enter, and infect them. For a virus to successfully stick to the T-cell receptor, it sometimes needs to recruit a protein floating in the blood that ordinarily binds to the receptor itself. One group, led by Robert Doms from the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center and William J. O'Brien at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, have identified a small molecule that binds on to one of these coreceptors (called CXCR4) on T-cells. By blocking this coreceptor site, the molecule, called ALX40-4C, has potential to slow the progression of HIV from initial infection to full-blown AIDS.

And at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, noted AIDS researcher Robert Gallo and associates have identified a new chemokine (a hormone that attrracts inflammatory cells to itself) that acts to supress HIV infection naturally. The chemical, called macrophage-derived chemokine (MDC), has potential as an anti-HIV drug. The group also found that receptors for MDC are found on several different kinds of cells, a discovery that may help researchers understand why HIV infection progresses differently in different people.

On this hour of Science Friday -- new receptors to vaccine trials, and from the testtube to the clinic.

Listen to this program in RealAudio!

Guests:

Robert W. Doms
Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA

Robert Gallo
Professor and Director
Institute of Human Virology
University of Maryland at Baltimore
Baltimore, MD

Dava Klirsfeld
Medical Director
AIDS Program
Bellevue Hospital Center
New York, NY

Books/Articles Discussed:

Related links:
The AIDS Education Global Information System
National Institutes of Health Office of AIDS Research
UNAIDS
The World Health Organization
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention AIDS office
Development of Vaccines to Infectious Diseases
The AIDS Clinical Trials Information Service