2 La Jolla Institutions Get $1.8 Million to Develop AIDS Research Facilities

Some scientists nationwide have complained that they lack the physical facilities to conduct their often-painstaking investigations into the killer disease AIDS.

In response, Congress has created a pool of about $28 million for the construction or expansion of AIDS-related research laboratories--and two institutions in La Jolla are among the initial beneficiaries.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded a total of almost $1.8 million in grant funds to the UC San Diego School of Medicine and to Medical Biology Institute, a 5-year-old nonprofit facility that conducts a range of biomedical research.

“It’s a lot easier to get research funds for AIDS than it is to get money to set up laboratories,” noted Charles Coulter, director of the research facilities improvement program at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

$28 Million in Grants

The institutes, he explained, are parceling out the $28 million to 40 to 50 institutions, drawn from among 115 applicants from 32 states nationwide. The first group of recipients, notified last week of their award, included the two La Jolla institutions and two other California facilities--UC San Francisco School of Medicine and the city/county Department of Public Health in San Francisco. A second group of recipients, likely including Stanford University and other California facilities, are to be announced next month, Coulter said.

Because of the contagious and hazardous nature of the disease, accredited AIDS research facilities must adhere to strict standards of security and containment. AIDS laboratories typically have separate ventilation systems, limited access, and special decontamination procedures to ensure that no one is infected--and that the research material itself remains untainted.

“You can’t just handle this routinely,” Coulter noted.

Major Research Site

The maximum amount that can be granted to any one institution under the government program is $1 million, close to the $997,000 to be received by UC San Diego. The School of Medicine is a major AIDS research site, now conducting about $7 million in research.

The funds, university officials said, will be used to construct AIDS laboratories on a floor of the new, $25-million Clinical Sciences Building, which is scheduled for occupancy in July, 1991, on the La Jolla campus. The new AIDS facility will both allow expanded research and allow faculty members working in disparate laboratories to work more closely together, sharing findings and more easily profiting from each other’s research.

“It allows for cross-fertilization of ideas,” said Dr. Ruth Covell, associate dean of the School of Medicine. “It’s very important in science to get people working on ideas together. Right now people are spread out among different facilities, and some of the programs we have can’t expand, because we simply don’t have the space.”

Medical Biology Institute received a grant of $795,000, to be used for a laboratory dedicated to the study of AIDS. Researchers there are attempting to duplicate human immune systems in mice. AIDS attacks the immune system, leaving victims open to a wide range of debilitating and ultimately fatal ailments.