ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Tuesday, October 8, 1996               TAG: 9610080083
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-3  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN 
SOURCE: Associated Press

IMMUNE SYSTEM RESEARCHERS WIN NOBEL

PETER C. DOHERTY and Rolf M. Zinkernagel share the prize for their joint work.

Two scientists who discovered how the immune system recognizes infected cells - a finding that could lead to new vaccines and therapies for cancer, diabetes and multiple sclerosis - won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday.

Australian Peter C. Doherty, who is now working in Memphis, Tenn., and Rolf M. Zinkernagel of Switzerland will share the $1.12 million prize for their joint research in the early 1970s at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra, Australia.

The work ``fundamentally changed our understanding of the development and normal function of the immune system,'' said the citation from Sweden's Karolinska Institute, whose Nobel Assembly decides the prize winners.

Doherty, 55, works at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. Zinkernagel, 52, heads the Institute of Experimental Immunology in Zurich, Switzerland.

They discovered how the immune system recognizes cells that must be eliminated because they have been infected by a virus. In mice, they showed these cells were doomed because they displayed a combination of two things: a tiny piece of virus protein plus a chemical label that identified the cells as belonging to the mouse.

Immune cells called T cells are responsible for identifying these infected cells.

It has taken years to understand the biochemical details behind the process Doherty and Zinkernagel uncovered, and only recently have scientists been able to focus on practical payoffs, said Don Wiley of Harvard University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Scientists are now studying such potential payoffs as:

*Directing the immune system to attack cancerous tumors or hunt down and kill cancer cells that escaped from tumors.

*Designing vaccines by finding out what protein piece from a germ best provokes the immune system into building defenses.

*Getting the immune system to reduce or stop mistaken attacks on normal tissue, an aberration that causes such diseases as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and insulin-dependent diabetes.

The immune system attacks cells infected with the AIDS virus after recognizing them in the way Doherty and Zinkernagel demonstrated, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He said he thought the work was more likely to help fight AIDS by aiding vaccine design than through new therapies.

Fauci called their work ``a very, very important seminal observation that really in many respects has greatly advanced the field of immunology.'

Zinkernagel said he had not expected to win because a Nobel Prize was given about 15 years ago for similar work.

``A Nobel Prize is always a surprise,'' Zinkernagel said. ``I thought then that the subject had been covered.''

LENGTH: Medium:   66 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  AP. 1. Rolf M. Zinkernagel\Now works in Switzerland. 2. 
          Australian Dr. Peter C. Doherty, 55, works at St. Jude Children's 
          Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. He and Zinkernagel won the prize
          for their work discovering how the immune system recognizes infected
          cells.