Take 2 Aspirin and Call Them in 20 Years--They Just Might Have a Cure : Illness: Biotech is working on a fix for the common cold, but the malady’s complexity and the priority given life-threatening diseases means it must wait.

So when will biotechnology cure the common cold?

It’s on the agenda of San Diego biotech firms--but nowhere near the top, for a variety of reasons.

For starters, the cold is one of the most complex and perplexing maladies facing man.

Dr. Vernon Knight, a professor of medicine and for 22 years chairman of the department of microbiology and immunology at Baylor University in Texas, is researching a cure for the cold.

He thinks there might be one in 20 years.

One of the keys, he said, is in developing a procedure in which the DNA of the infected cells can be analyzed to determine which one of 200 possible viruses has triggered the cold. Only after the specific virus is identified can the appropriate and equally specific medicine be accurately prescribed.

Researchers are working on the mechanics of taking a few cells from nasal mucus, adding chemicals to multiply them to a trillion pieces of DNA, and then, in the course of two or three hours, accurately assessing the particular virus.

At the same time, research is under way to develop a system of delivering the cold medicine through an aerosol spray.

“We’re working toward instrumentation that will allow rapid diagnosis of the specific virus, and specific treatment. Still, we’re 20 years off,” Knight said.

A San Diego company that is considering the cold is Genta, which is pursuing so-called antisense technology, which calls for illnesses to be waylaid at the DNA level.

“The cold will be one of the last things we cure,” said Genta President Tom Adams. “A lot of molecular biology still needs to be done to know exactly what to target.”

Besides, he said, clinical testing for cold cures won’t receive the attention of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as quickly as, say, potential cancer and AIDS cures because the cold is not life-threatening.

From a commercial biotech viewpoint, Adams said, “it makes better sense to go after life-threatening diseases. Those are better targets, from a regulatory strategy, because they are given more prompt attention by the FDA.

“It’s a front-office decision not to pursue the cold, for now,” he said.

If the common cold might be cured in 20 years or so, what does biotechnology promise 100 years from now?

Gene therapy, the ability to fix flawed genes or replace them with healthy proxies, will be more commonplace, scientists say, thereby all but ending certain diseases.

That technology will essentially allow the human body to be genetically retrofitted.

The challenge for now, researchers say, is in figuring out how to deliver cloned genes to the appropriate cells.

But most researchers--even self-proclaimed biomedical futurists--are reluctant to speculate much beyond the turn of the century. Most are afraid of being ridiculed if their projections don’t hold true.

Ellen Morrison is a research fellow specializing in health care issues at the Institute for the Future, in the Bay Area community of Menlo Park.

“And we only focus on the next five or 10 years,” she said. “Beyond that, there are too many variables, not the least being the cost of health care and who is going to pay for it.

“The thing that we need to take into account, while we watch ‘Star Trek,’ is, who is going to pay for that technology?” Morrison said. “We can’t even afford to build the USS Enterprise, let alone stock it with the kinds of advances we see on TV.”