A Different Kind of Aids Fight

By Claudia Wallis

It is one of the more unseemly rivalries to sully the scientific community in decades. Squaring off across the Atlantic, amid charges, countercharges and growing anger, are researchers at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. At issue: who was first to isolate the virus that causes AIDS and first to develop a blood-screening test to detect AIDS infection. At stake: national pride, possibly a Nobel Prize and perhaps millions of dollars in patent royalties on the blood test.

Last year, after months of feuding, the Pasteur team, headed by Dr. Luc Montagnier, filed two legal actions in the U.S. The first challenged a patent on the blood test awarded to Dr. Robert Gallo and his colleagues. The second charged Gallo with breach of contract for allegedly using for commercial purposes samples of virus sent to him by the French. Gallo had agreed to use the samples for research purposes only.

The French last week scored a minor triumph in the battle: the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office acknowledged that they indeed had a rival claim to the blood-test patent and were entitled to a formal hearing. Moreover, the Patent Office recognized the French as the "senior party," since their patent application was filed seven months earlier than the NIH application. Now, says Charles Lipsey, a patent attorney for Pasteur, "the burden of proving that they invented the test first is going to rest on Dr. Gallo."

Gallo has long maintained that no matter who actually discovered the virus, his lab was first to grow large quantities of it; this tricky step, he insists, was crucial to developing a workable blood test. "We had the science first," says Acting Assistant Secretary of Health Donald Macdonald. "We feel strong in our position." But mass-producing the virus "doesn't matter," counters Lipsey. "What matters is who made the invention first."

Last week Gallo angrily accused the Montagnier team of greediness. "I don't get any money," he emphasized, pointing out that royalties on the test go to its manufacturers and the U.S. Treasury, not his personal bank account. "The fight is theirs--to get the money," he charged. "My name is used in vain." But Pasteur scientists would not reap personal profits either. The proceeds, explains Spokeswoman Caroline Chaine, would go to the institute, which "lives on the funds and the patents of its research." Says she: "We want our work to be recognized."

Money aside, no one doubts that Gallo is as eager as the French to get the glory for one of the more important discoveries in late-20th century medicine. "It's what we call the race for the Nobel Prize," says one cynical scientist. In their second action, the Pasteur researchers are attempting to prove that they were the first to identify the AIDS virus. They hope to show either that the Americans derived their virus from French samples--essentially appropriating the virus as their own--or that the American discovery depended on key information provided by the Pasteur samples.

Much of the case will rest on the significance of subtle differences between the French and American viruses. Gallo insists that his virus is too genetically distinct to have been derived from the French strain. But according to James Swire, an attorney for Pasteur, "there is a body of scientific opinion" that disagrees. Swire has been seeking lab notebooks and memos from the NIH, under the Freedom of Information Act. So far, he says, "we've found lots of things that strengthen our complaint and nothing that damages it." Among the findings: a photograph illustrating one of Gallo's key papers on the discovery of the virus actually depicted the Pasteur strain. The mistake may have been accidental, but it has proved embarrassing to Gallo, who last month published a formal admission of the error.

Meanwhile, a secondary battle over what to call the AIDS virus may have been resolved last week by the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses. The name of the virus had itself become a political football as the French insisted on LAV (lymphadenopathy-associated virus), while Gallo's group used HTLV-3 (human T-cell lymphotropic virus, type 3). In a statement published in the journals Nature and Science, a taxonomy group subcommittee proposed a third name, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and urged scientists to adopt it. Because of the pending legal actions, Gallo refused to endorse the change, although Montagnier signed the statement. Nonetheless, Subcommittee Chairman Harold Varmus, a leading California virologist, expressed hope that the decision would help defuse "the tense legalistic atmosphere" that has tarnished AIDS research. "The emotional flavor of this branch of virology," he wryly concluded, "is not quite what it should be."

With reporting by Gisela Bolte/Washington and Christine Gorman/New York