Tracking the storm.

The French researcher some activists credit for discovering HIV is coming to America -- to Queens College in New York City, to be exact.

In its quest to become a world-class institution, the college last April recruited Luc Montagnier, former head of the AIDS division at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, to run a brand-new AIDS laboratory. Widely respected as one of the most important figures in AIDS research, Montagnier has been at the forefront of the struggle to understand the disease since it first appeared. Although he is officially credited as the codiscoverer of the virus with American physician Robert Gallo, many medical professionals argue that Montagnier isolated HIV nearly a year before his American counterpart.

Montagnier's appointment catapults the college to the top ranks of ADDS research. His presence was the brain-child of Bernard Salick, a Beverly Hills, Calif., physician who donated $3 million to endow a chair for the researcher. The state and city of New York have followed suit, anteing up nearly $20 million for the new center, to be named after Salick and his wife. The center will be one of the few research institutions in the world focusing almost entirely on HIV research.

In an interview with The Advocate just days before the Fifth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, held February 1-5 in Chicago, Montagnier discussed his new home, the search for an AIDS vaccine, and the continuing problem of unsafe sex.

Let's begin by talking about the Bernard and Gloria Salick Center for Molecular and Cellular Biology.

The center will be fully operational in two years' time, but probably in the middle of the year we will have a temporary laboratory of 4,000 square feet. We are planning to have 25,000 square feet of laboratory space. AIDS win be our first priority, but in two years' time we don't know where AIDS research will stand, so we are also thinking of activity on other diseases. We think our experience with retroviruses will be applied to other pathologies.

What do you expect to accomplish there?

Our AIDS project will focus on two priorities. One win be to find treatments that will complement what we already use. We believe that these treatments are not sufficient and are also too expensive to be applied to many people in the developing world. The idea is to find, for instance, vaccinal therapy that would stop it at one time. There are two phases of AIDS. There is the asymptomatic phase, in which the virus is not replicating at a highly dramatic rate, and the second phase, which is fun-blown AIDS, in which the virus multiplies at a very high rate. If we can lower the replication in the first place and neutralize new mutations, this may be a way to prevent the disease. Our goal is not to completely eradicate the infection -- that would be very difficult -- but to produce a vaccine that will prevent not infection but disease. I think this is more possible.

Would this vaccine be a live-virus vaccine?

No, I don't think so. The idea of the live-virus vaccine is to produce in a continuous way some viral antigens. I think we could achieve that through other means and still have protection. Having a live virus in our cells -- nobody could predict the long-term outcome. This retroviral infection could figure [differently] in others and give someone the disease.

You have been interested lately in comparmentalization research, the idea Md in some individuals HIV infection is limited to certain organs or tissues. Can you explain that further?

We are working with a biotech company, Calypte, which has designed a urine test for the HIV antibody. It shows that some women exposed to HIV have HIV antibodies in their urine [but do not test positive for them in their blood]. I don't say this is why they are protected, but at least this is a marker of exposure to the virus without being completely infected at the symptomatic level.

What is the theory to explain those results?

Since most of the transmission is sexual transmission, you have a regional or local response to the virus. One possible way to explain the antibodies in the urine is that there is some leaching of blood from the kidneys. This is possible, but it is also possible that there is a local making of antibodies in the urogenital system. Also, there is documentation that the virus isolated from sperm and seminal fluids is a little different from the virus in the blood. It means there three or four compartments. Of course, you also have the generalized infection. We don't know why, but there are some gradients of infection. That is why it is so important not only to have excellent treatment but also to try to get back the immune defense, because there you have a natural defense that takes place everywhere.

What are some of the other promising areas in research at the

There are still many unknowns about the cytopathology of AIDS. There are two main theories: that it kills the cells infected directly or that the cells die in an indirect way. Actually, I am open to both. What seems to be clear to me is that after the primary infection most of the cells die indirectly, but at the later stage, when the viral load is very high, the virus kills a lot of cells directly. Another important field is that of coreceptors [areas where the virus in essence docks with a cell to begin infecting it]. I think the last word has not been said in that field. I think there are more than two receptors. Another interesting field, which is my own, is cofactors, not only to the disease but also to transmission. I am still puzzled by the fact that you get more sexual transmission in some ethnic populations. One way to answer this is to look for genetic factors.

You have mentioned a couple of times the connection between research and treatment. Do you believe Mm has been a proper balance between the two, or has treatment been getting more emphasis because of the recent advances?

Nobody could be satisfied with the clinical treatment. It is very difficult, and we don't know how long it will last. There should be new types of drugs. What perhaps should receive more attention is the effect of the treatment on the virus. This research applied to patients is very important. Basic research is very useful, but it should be more geared toward application than it was before. I am not, of course, against basic research. I'm a basic researcher myself. But I think we should be able to link both.

The danger is that many people believe that AIDS is a treatable disease and should not receive more attention than other diseases. They don't actually see the real world, where 95% of the people with HIV are not treated and are dying. And even though we have some blue sky now in our country, the sky could become cloudy again very soon.

I imagine you find it frustrating to watch infection rates rising again, particularly among young gay men, and to hear discussions of the thrill of unprotected sex.

I am very puzzled by the fact that young people are getting infected again. They don't take precautions despite an enormous amount of information. It's like riding a race car at 200 kilometers an hour. Some people like the risk. It's very difficult in our society. You cannot impose certain behavioral changes. Education can do it at the right time, probably by high school. After that it is too late.

Why is that?

It's easier to learn things for life by the age of 12 and not the age of 18. This is just my guess. I think in our campaign the most important time is 10 to 12 years old, before they get sexually active. At that time there is no sexual pressure. It's clear that prevention will never be sufficient. That's why we need a vaccine that will be safe.

You said at a conference in Hamburg, Germany, last year that that was five or ten years away.

Nobody can predict it. Even if we have a vaccine working in a laboratory, to prove that the vaccine is efficient, we need a Phase III trial [on thousands of volunteers]. I've participated in meetings where there were concerns by ethical experts. There is no clear solution. My proposal now is to test a vaccine first on people who have been infected, and if you show some efficacy at this level, you might be able to go further to study uninfected people in a population with a high rate of infection. But it will be more and more difficult -- and less and less ethical -- to find populations in a natural condition of high infection.

In the United States, AIDS research has often been the subject of political controversy. Are you ready for that.?

It's about the same in Europe, so I'm prepared for the same types of battles. Some people in France said that I speak too much, but I think it's important for an AIDS researcher to explain AIDS to laypeople. I think I'll have the same message I had in France.