JAPANESE COMPANY DEVELOPS NEW AIDS ANTIVIRAL

Mitsubishi Kasei Corporation, together with the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), the University of Birmingham (England), and Showa University in Tokyo, has developed an AIDS antiviral which, according to a February 16 Reuters report, the company hopes to enter into U. S. clinical trials before the end of 1990.

A technical report on the potential drug, called HEPT (hydroxyethoxy methyl phenylthiothymine) appeared in Biochemical and Biophysics Research Communications, December 29, 1989, pages 1375-1381. The antiviral worked in both T-cells and macrophages infected with HIV-1, but did not affect HIV-2 or other viruses. How it works is not known.