THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 16, 1995 TAG: 9511160240
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
LifeNet Transplant Services, a Virginia Beach-based company that procures tissues and organs for transplant, says it has developed a better way to ``wash'' the AIDS virus and other viruses from bone provided for grafts.
Company officials say they're expanding research to use the process on soft body tissue, such as a valve. And it may have applications for cleansing donated blood and organs, company officials said, although the company doesn't have any immediate plans to pursue those areas.
A company spokesman says LifeNet has applied for a patent for Allowash, a process that uses a new chemical combination for killing HIV - the virus that causes AIDS - and other viruses. The company also developed a specific procedure for using the chemical.
LifeNet officials won't discuss how the substance works. They plan to sell the technique to other companies while providing the needed chemical product. The nonprofit company says it hopes to recoup some of the $1 million it spent to develop Allowash.
The risk of contracting HIV from a bone graft, like any tissue transplant, is already extremely low.
It's ``practically zero,'' said Paul Feorino, formerly a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who worked as a consultant to LifeNet.
Transplant services must screen donor tissue for HIV. There's a window of time right after infection in which tests can't detect HIV. But technology developed in recent years has shrunk that window to as little as a few days with some testing methods, said Feorino.
Even so, said company officials, doctors and patients remain very concerned about HIV transmission.
``There's a chance, if someone gets infected today and tomorrow he has an automobile accident and you get his bone,'' Feorino said.
Even if infected bone tissue slips through, services already have various methods for killing HIV, treating the bone with isopropyl alcohol and hydrogen peroxide. LifeNet's Allowash is just an improvement on this, said spokesman Doug Wilson.
``If there's a way to make anything any safer, the industry can't ignore it,'' he said.
Wilson said the company doesn't plan to relax any of its policies on testing tissue for HIV. The procedures are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.
Other virus-killing procedures exist for cleansing blood-derived products, like immune gamma globulin. But there is nothing used now for organs and soft tissue. And there isn't anything proven to work with blood, because the fragile red blood cells can't withstand the chemicals that kill the virus, said LeeAnn McCall, associate director of clinical testing services for the American Red Cross' Mid-Atlantic branch.
McCall said she wasn't familiar with LifeNet's new method. But she said people in the medical field are looking for ways to cleanse the blood supply of AIDS and other viruses.
``It's definitely a prime concern,'' she said.
LifeNet has been working on Allowash for years, but the effort took on more urgency in 1991, when it was discovered that three people had died from AIDS they contracted from LifeNet organs. The donated organs came from a Dinwiddie man killed in a gas station holdup in 1985.
LifeNet tested the body twice before distributing the organs and tissue, but tests available at the time couldn't detect the virus for months after infection.
Later investigation found four more people who got HIV from the man's tissue, three of them from bone grafts. by CNB