AIDS Researchers Share Alpert Prize

By William J. Cromie

Gazette Staff

Two scientists who both claimed to have discovered the AIDS virus will share the $100,000 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize.

Robert Gallo of the University of Maryland and Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in Paris and Queens College in New York will receive the award today in Boston.

The Foundation is funded solely by Warren Alpert, a Providence-based businessman. This is the tenth year in which the prize has been presented in recognition of scientists whose research has had a major impact on saving lives and reducing suffering.

Alpert, who graduated from the Business School in 1947, serves on the Board of Fellows of the Faculty of Medicine at the Medical School. In 1984, he became a founding donor of the "New Pathway to General Medical Education" with a $500,000 gift, and a building at the Medical School was named in his honor in 1993.

Alpert's Warren Equities Inc. and its subsidiaries market petroleum, food, tobacco, and spirits and invest in transportation and real estate. He established the Foundation in 1986 and has been its sole source of funding.

This year's winners were selected by a committee comprised by researchers from Harvard and M.I.T., and chaired by Joseph Martin, Dean of the Medical School.

Montagnier claimed to have discovered the AIDS virus in 1983; a year later, Gallo made the same claim. The French government sued the U.S. government, and in 1987 both groups agreed to split the millions in royalties resulting from a blood test that detects the virus.

Four years ago, however, the U.S. admitted that Gallo had "discovered" the virus that Montagnier had isolated. The French scientist had sent a sample to Gallo, which the American latter claimed had somehow contaminated blood from the U.S. AIDS patients he was studying.

Gallo, however, went on to invent a means for growing large quantities of the virus so it could be studied in a laboratory. That breakthrough eventully allowed Gallo's team to show that the virus ravages the body's immune defenses and leads to AIDS.

Montagnier earned the Alpert Prize for finding the virus, Gallo for conclusively showing that it caused AIDS.

Two Harvard scientists have received the award in previous years. Stuart Orkin, Leland Fikes Professor of Pediatric Medicine, won in 1993 for his work with diseases of the blood. His research led to development of a widely used test to detect beta thalassemia, an inherited blood disorder.

Louis Kunkel, professor of genetics and of pediatrics, won in 1988 for discovering the gene that causes a major form of muscular dystrophy.