Innovation and goats help to fight Aids

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

An Auckland company that has invented an experimental HIV-Aids drug has signed a deal with two United States groups to use the same methods to develop therapies for Sars, smallpox and other illnesses.

At Virionyx's new $800,000 office and laboratory in Mangere yesterday, Prime Minister Helen Clark hailed the firm as an example of the innovation needed in the economy.

"These developments at Virionyx are a significant step for the New Zealand biotechnology industry and one that will boost its international profile," she said.

The HIV drug, based on plasma from two special goat herds at secret locations in the North and South Islands, is in the middle of its second round of human trials in the US.

Virionyx chairman Peter Sullivan said the company was approached by the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute and biotechnology firm ZeptoMetrix.

They asked Virionyx to help in developing antibody and antiviral treatments for Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome), West Nile virus, dengue fever, smallpox, anthrax, plague, tularemia (which can cause fever and pneumonia) and botulism.

To make the HIV drug, disease-free goats are immunised with a purified protein from the virus. Weeks later, plasma, which then contains antibodies proven to kill HIV in the laboratory, is extracted from the goats' bloodstreams. The liquid is purified and the antibodies are extracted for injection.

The human trials so far are to test for safety and the optimum dose, but lead researcher Dr Bruce Dezube, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, has said the drug shows "early evidence of antiviral activity", even in drug-resistant patients.

Virionyx hopes to test the effectiveness of the drug, a form of immunotherapy, in patients next year and, if successful, to market it in 2005 at the earliest.

Under the partnership announced yesterday, developing a potential Sars treatment will be the first task for Virionyx's scientists - and goats.

Consultant Dr Doug Wilson said the company would within a month receive supplies of an inactivated part of the Sars virus, which would be used to immunise the goats.

The company says the goats do not get sick from these agents.

Virionyx makes the HIV drug at its old premises in Penrose, but has plans for a $4.4 million production facility at Mangere if any of the new drugs prove effective.