Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 9, 1990                   TAG: 9003091653
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

AMBUSH OF AIDS VIRUS BEING STUDIED

Dr. John J. Rossi, a researcher at the Bechman Research Institute of the City of Hope in Duarte, Calif., said Thursday that his laboratory has made a synthetic ribozyme that is able to genetically cripple the AIDS virus and prevent it from reproducing in test tube experiments.

The ribozyme, said Rossie, "is inside the cell and its waiting there like a soldier waiting for the enemy to come."

Although the technique is promising, he said it is still far from being available for treating patients.

Rossi, in a telephone interview, said his team developed an artificial gene that secreted the ribozyme and then put the gene into living human cells in test tubes.

When these human cells were exposed to the AIDS virus, the ribozyme blocked the virus from reproducing.

The ribozyme works like "molecular scissors," that slice the ribonucleic acid of the AIDS virus, thus blocking the virus from making copies of itself.

Ribonucleic acid, or RNA, is used by the virus to force cells to make more virus. By cutting the RNA, said Rossi, the virus is permanently crippled.

The ribozyme itself is a copy of an RNA that other scientists found in a plant virus. Those researchers discovered that a small part of the plant virus RNA acted like an enzyme and was capable of selectively cutting any part of the genetic pattern in a target virus.

The term ribozyme refers to an RNA that acts as an enzyme by permitting a reaction to occur within a cell.

In addition to Rossi, scientists that took part in the study were Nava Sarver of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a part of the National Institute of Health; Pairoj S. Chang of Loma Linda University, and four others from the City of Hope Medical Center.

A report on the study will be published today in Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The ribozyme can be designed to attack any part of the viral RNA and leave others portions alone. Rossi said he believes the ribozyme also could be used to combat virtually any kind of virus, including those that cause colds and flu.