$100 Million Awarded for AIDS Research : Program Could Enroll 1,000 Patients in Tests Within Six Months

WASHINGTON — The Health and Human Services Department announced Monday that the federal government will pour $100 million into a major nationwide research program to search for drugs effective against AIDS.

The awards represent the largest single amount of federal money devoted to clinical AIDS testing since the deadly disease was identified in 1981, federal health officials said, and could enroll as many as 1,000 patients within the next six months--enlarging by one-third the number of people with AIDS now participating in experimental programs.

“Everyone in the scientific research community who works in AIDS research shares the sense of urgency that is felt throughout the country, and now the world,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is sponsoring the five-year study.

Five California Campuses

“We believe this new effort should greatly enhance our research capabilities and bring us closer to the answers we seek,” he said.

The program, which will be funded at $20 million during the first year, will test as many as six drugs in 14 institutions. They include five facilities in California and two in New York City, the regions with the largest concentrations of AIDS cases in the country. The California facilities are UCLA, USC, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco and Stanford University.

“There is no proven, effective treatment for AIDS at the present time, and the mortality rate may well approach 100% within five years of diagnosis,” Fauci said. “Well-designed, controlled clinical trials are critically important to our effort to defeat such a lethal opponent.”

AIDS destroys the body’s immune system, leaving it powerless against certain cancers, neurological disorders and otherwise rare infections.

Will Study Promising Drugs

The program will study drugs that “have shown promise in the laboratory or in preliminary clinical studies,” Fauci said. They include agents that act directly against HTLV-III, the virus that causes AIDS, as well as those that treat the opportunistic infections and cancers associated with the disease. The research will also examine agents known as “immunomodulators”--designed to restore or enhance the immune system--initially alone and later in combination with other drugs.

The drugs include azidothymidine, also known as AZT or Compound S; Foscarnet; HPA-23; ribavirin; interferon alpha, and possibly dideoxycytidine. With the exception of dideoxycytidine, which is still undergoing preclinical evaluation, all of these drugs have previously been studied in humans, but “we need further information about their action in different kinds of patients and against the various manifestations of illness,” Fauci said.

If any of the drugs proves especially promising, there is a “mechanism” for making it more widely available while it is still experimental, Fauci said.

Dr. Michael Gottlieb, the principal AIDS investigator at UCLA, called the new program “a positive step forward” that “should be encouraging for patients with AIDS and their families.”

‘Taking Strong Action’

Gottlieb, who said UCLA is expected to receive $10.2 million during the five-year program, added: “The Public Health Service is taking strong action in developing a network for drug testing. It indicates that a patient with AIDS or HTLV-III infection has not been forgotten. We don’t have the answer, but at least we can give it our best try.”

Drs. John M. Leedom and Alexandra M. Levine, the principal USC researchers involved in the new program, said their facility will receive $7.5 million for the five-year contract. “We expect to treat a minimum of 70 new patients a year over the next five years,” Levine said.

Other facilities in the program include those at Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; New York University; University of Miami; University of Pittsburgh; University of Rochester; University of Texas, and the University of Washington.

The grant at UC San Diego will total $8.4 million over five years. Research will aim at developing a faster and more sensitive test for detecting the AIDS virus, officials there said. Scientists will also study the psychological and neurological complications associated with AIDS.

As of Monday, there were 22,173 reported AIDS cases and 12,186 deaths.