AIDS VACCINE TESTS AIMED AT INFANTS

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

DATE: FRIDAY, February 12, 1993                   TAG: 9302120168
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BOSTON                                LENGTH: Medium
AIDS VACCINE TESTS AIMED AT INFANTS
Federal officials are set to begin nationwide tests to try to block the spread of AIDS from pregnant women to their offspring, a researcher said Thursday.
Officials are optimistic that vaccines and injections of potent antibodies might block infection in some newborn infants, said Dr. John L. Sullivan of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester.
"Do I think we have the vaccine that's going to do the job? I don't think so," Sullivan said. But "it's very likely it could induce some protection."
Other researchers who spoke at a news conference at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science were not as optimistic.
"It's premature to predict that we can find a cure," said William Haseltine of Human Genome Sciences.
In the United States, about 6,000 children are born each year to mothers infected with AIDS, Sullivan said.
About 1,500 of those children develop the disease themselves, he said. Several trials of vaccines and antibody injections are set to begin during the next six months, with the first to begin in March, Sullivan said.
The trials are being organized by the National Institutes of Health, and will be conducted at medical centers across the nation. Sullivan leads the group designing the studies.
In one trial, newborns will be given injections of immune globulin, a mix of antibody proteins that helps prevent infection but is not aimed specifically at the AIDS virus.
In other trials, newborns will be given a vaccine injection within 48 hours of birth and multiple repeat doses within six months, Sullivan said.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB