IRVINE : UCI Scientist Gets AIDS-Related Grant

A UC Irvine pathologist has been awarded a $3.1-million, four-year federal grant to look for cures to cryptococcal meningitis, an often fatal fungal infection in AIDS patients.

A research team assembled by associate professor of pathology Michael Selsted is one of only four groups in the nation funded this year by the National Institutes of Health to seek cures to infections that kill AIDS patients.

“I find it somewhat amazing that the organism which kills the AIDS patients is rarely, if ever, the (human immuno-deficiency) virus. It is the opportunistic pathogen,” Selsted said. “And it’s incredible that there hasn’t been more investigation” of this particular meningitis or several other infections, such as lymphoma or Kaposi’s sarcoma, which also kill AIDS patients, he added.

Testing their theories in laboratory vials and on white mice, Selsted and colleagues at UCLA, the University of Nevada and the Liposome Co. of Princeton, N.J., plan four approaches to combat cryptococcal meningitis, an infection of the brain that affects up to 20% of AIDS patients. The disease can lead to coma, seizures and death.

Two drugs now on the market can combat this meningitis, but both are highly toxic, Selsted said. In September, 1990, NIH “put out the call” for new therapies, and Selsted’s group beat 15 other research groups nationally for the grant. Though he is optimistic about the research, Selsted cautioned that it will be three to five years before any of his team’s therapies can be tested on humans.