15 Drug Firms Announce Alliance on AIDS : Research: The pharmaceutical giants will cooperate in seeking the most effective way to combine new therapies.

Fifteen major U.S. and European pharmaceutical companies on Monday announced that they will share information from AIDS research efforts in an attempt to reduce drug-development time.

After more than a year of formal discussions, the group, which includes Merck & Co., Pfizer Inc., Glaxo of Britain and Switzerland’s Hoffman-La Roche, has agreed to exchange clinical data and drug supplies so that antiviral medicines can be tested in the best possible combinations.

The alliance, known as the Inter-Company Collaboration for AIDS Drug Development, will have its first meeting this summer so that each company can detail the compounds it is developing. The group said its top research scientists expect to meet about six times a year.

As of the end of 1992, 17 medicines had been approved for treating AIDS and 66 companies were investigating 91 other drugs and vaccines, according to the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Assn.

The unusual collaboration, one of the broadest in the drug industry, was welcomed within the AIDS community. “This is definitely good news,” said Dr. Jeffrey Laurence, a senior scientist with the nonprofit American Foundation for AIDS Research. “These are all the major players” in the antiviral field, he noted.

Antiviral drugs are being developed in the hope of slowing the advance of AIDS. So far, the only antivirals to have received Food and Drug Administration approval--AZT, DDI and DDC--are expensive, have side effects and may have limited benefit. Recent studies have shown that AZT used as a single therapy may lose some of its effectiveness within about a year.

HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is far more evasive than researchers initially anticipated. Because the virus mutates quickly and develops resistance to drugs, scientists are seeking treatments that involve several drugs taken in combination. The hope, ultimately, is to have an arsenal of AIDS-fighting medicines that patients can rotate through over time.

“As long as the drugs work, this will shave time off finding the best combination of drugs to use,” said Dr. Edward Scolnick, president of Merck’s research labs.

The collaboration also lowers the risk of losing promising drugs “because in isolation the drug doesn’t look very good” even though it may be effective if used with another medicine, Laurence said.

Drug companies only occasionally have worked together without financial incentive, usually to meet a public health crisis. In 1941, for example, a federal effort to commercialize the production of penicillin resulted in a collaboration among Merck, E. R. Squibb and Pfizer. More than a decade later, the National Institutes of Health sought industry help screening compounds for anti-tumor activity.

Drug companies routinely enter into joint ventures with each other or smaller concerns to develop new therapies, but those arrangements typically offer financial reward. A major drug company, for example, might fund research and development at a smaller company in exchange for certain marketing rights should any drugs be developed.

The Inter-Company Collaboration effort has no commercial incentive. Because companies are not sharing information on basic research, the compounds they develop remain exclusively theirs.