The Virus Fighters

The Virus Fighters
by Elizabeth Arledge

Since the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 1984, millions of dollars and thousands of hours of scientific effort by some of the best minds in the world have gone into trying to crack open its arsenal of secrets. AIDS today is considered a "treatable" disease for many patients in Western countries; combinations of powerful anti-viral drugs can stall the progress of HIV and keep these lucky patients healthy for many years. But for the vast majority of people infected, especially those in developing nations, these drugs are of no use. They are unavailable and too expensive, requiring life-long adherence to demanding dosage regimens, which are impossible in conditions of extreme poverty and limited medical care.

Therefore, basic scientific work on understanding the virus and a search for a vaccine that might replace these drugs goes on with a tremendous sense of urgency.

"There's been a shift in the research in a couple of ways," says Dr. Robert Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland and co-discoverer of HIV. "The early years were more about trying to find out and understand anything. Now, I think, most scientists doing laboratory research on HIV, the immune response, and the disease are more cognizant of thinking that the research should have some practical utility. People are giving more thought to biological approaches to control the disease, on manipulating the immune response, and, of course, on developing a preventive vaccine." (For an update on the hunt for a vaccine by Dr. David Baltimore, chairman of the National Institutes of Health's AIDS Vaccine Research Committee, see Search for a Vaccine.)

Gallo's lab is currently focusing intense attention on a group of naturally occurring chemicals in the immune system called chemokines. Chemokines are tiny molecules involved in signaling and communication among cells involved in immune response. One critical recent discovery has been that certain chemokines are able to block HIV infection.