Salk Institute Becomes AIDS-Knowledge Hub
Biotech: Hopes Hinge on Bringing Researchers’ Promising Compounds Into One Center Will Lead To Faster Treatment
BY MARION WEBB
Senior Staff Writer
The Salk Institute will create a new state-funded research center allowing AIDS experts from various California institutions to pool their knowledge in an effort to speed up the discovery of novel and better drugs.
“The goal of the center is to assist California AIDS researchers to evaluate promising compounds that interfere with HIV replication,” said Dr. Ned Landau, director of the new Center for the Study of Retroviral Inhibitors at the Salk Institute in La Jolla.
AIDS researchers’ early optimism for a scientific breakthrough has long been tempered by the complexity of the virus.
Even though the arrival of powerful drug cocktails has brought relief to thousands of people living with HIV, the drug mixtures are costly and cause serious side effects.
Landau hopes that bringing researchers’ most promising compounds into one center will lead to better medicines sooner.
He also envisions AIDS drugs that could be produced cheaply enough to be affordable for poor African nations and the majority of people living in Third World countries where AIDS is rampant and drugs remain unattainable.
Landau hopes to identify one or more lead drug compounds by 2004 or 2005.
These compounds would then be licensed to or developed in partnership with biotechnology or pharmaceutical firms, he said.
It could take a decade or more before the public would reap the benefits of the center’s findings, if at all. The reality is the majority of compounds fail during human testing.
Landau and two colleagues, Frederick Bushman and Katherine Jones, hope to start running the center next month. All three have “gained a large amount of expertise in working with the virus” and this “understanding can be readily applied to this center,” Landau said.
The University of California’s systemwide AIDS research program was created in 1983 at the request of the state Legislature to support research. The three-year grant will be funded with an initial $284,000 in January, totaling $788,000 over the next three years.
Landau expects to receive an initial five or six compounds the center will test for their ability to block the AIDS virus from replicating itself.
Many drugs work by binding to a particular drug target, such as a site on a disease-causing bacteria or virus, and block it from causing disease.
Landau said his laboratory currently investigates several compounds for their ability to block HIV from entering cells and spreading the virus to cause full-blown AIDS.
Drug cocktails have proved effective in reducing the amount of HIV circulating in the blood, prolonging for years the onset of full-blown AIDS.
“But in the areas of the world where AIDS is most prevalent, those cocktails are less practical, because of the (high) cost (of the drugs) and the (need) for doctor’s supervision,” he said.
HIV is tricky, because it can mutate and develop multiple strains, making it resistant to drugs. As a result, patients have to take several drugs at one time and switch to a new regimen when the old drugs no longer work.
Landau said an AIDS vaccine would be the best solution.
Research institutions and corporations already are pinning their hopes on developing AIDS vaccines that spell lucrative payoffs if approved for commercialization.
Landau said researchers don’t expect to see a breakthrough in the near future.
“There have been some promising results in monkey studies, but it remains to be determined if those vaccines will work in humans,” he said.
Several AIDS vaccines have been tested in humans, but none have proved successful.
Immune Response Corp. in Carlsbad, for instance, has developed an HIV vaccine for people infected with the virus. The firm has had several clinical setbacks and recently warned it may have to file for bankruptcy.
Other local biotechnology firms dabbling in HIV vaccine developments include Epimmune Inc., Vical Inc. and Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals.