U.S. Task Force Formed to Speed Creation of Drug to Fight AIDS

The Clinton Administration on Tuesday announced the formation of a task force to encourage “unprecedented high-level collaboration” among government and university scientists and the pharmaceutical industry to speed development of an anti-virus drug to fight AIDS.

Donna Shalala, secretary of Health and Human Services, billed creation of the 15-member panel as a major Administration initiative, saying that it will complement President Clinton’s successful bid to increase government spending on AIDS research by 21% this year, to $1.3 billion.

The task force will foster cooperation among large and small drug companies “to refocus and re-energize our best minds for a concerted attack on this killer,” Shalala told a news briefing.

Task force members have not yet been selected, although Dr. Philip R. Lee, head of the U.S. Public Health Service and Shalala’s assistant secretary for health, has been named chairman.

Members “will be drawn from government, the pharmaceutical industry, academia, medicine and the AIDS-affected communities,” Shalala said. The public is being asked to submit nominations so that Shalala may make the selections in about 30 days.

Dr. David A. Kessler, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said that he hopes the new panel will remedy a situation in which “not a single new drug application” for fighting AIDS is awaiting FDA approval. A number of drugs are under study, he said, but none has reached the stage where a manufacturer is asking approval to market it.

FDA officials said that since March, 1987, the agency has approved 14 applications for products to treat serious HIV and AIDS-related infections, including Zidovudine or AZT, but all have limited uses.

“The question is, when do scientists take that next step?” one official said. “When do we get the proper compound to attack the root disease?”

Calling that situation a “sad fact,” Shalala said: “We cannot achieve our goal unless we start filling that pipeline with promising compounds. That is the purpose of the new panel.”

A number of federal agencies are involved in various aspects of AIDS and AIDS research, from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the Public Health Service and the National Institutes of Health.

In addition, AIDS-related research is spread across dozens of universities. The drug industry, which has a vested interest in finding a cure for the disease, last April established an “Inter-Company Collaboration on AIDS Drug Development” among 15 firms to aid research. The participating companies pledged to share information and to cooperate on certain aspects of their studies.

While recognizing that some existing AIDS treatments have limited value, “everybody knows we need a better anti-viral drug, one that goes to the heart of the disease,” Dr. P. Roy Vagelos, chairman and chief executive officer of Merck & Co., said.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force called the panel “a positive step in the right direction.” But it added: “We have yet to see a national plan for a coordinated response to this epidemic.”