FREDERICK CANCER
RESEARCH FACILITY

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P.O. Box 6. Frederick. Maryland 2 1701

May 20, 1985

Dr. Harold E. Varmus
Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology
Ilniv. of California School of Medicine
San Francisco, Cal i forni a 94143

Dear Harol d:

I am pleased to work with you in the subcommittee for naming human exogenous
pathogenic retroviruses. As I indicated in my previous letter I am for
changing the names and establishing a unifying nomenclature for AIDS associated
viruses.
committee.

I would now like to submit my proposal for consideration by the

First of all, the existing, widely accepted and appropriate nomenclature for
the human T-cell leukemia vi ruses type-I (HTLV-I) and type-I I (HTLV-11)
should be retained.
involved.
symbols may be suggested for type designation.

This seems reasonable not only to me but many of the

A minor change, namely the use of Arabic instead of the Roman

The AIDS viruses, isolated, cloned and sequenced, however, differ from HTLV
in a large extent. They are not more closely related to HTLV-I and -11
than to other retroviruses including both lymphotropic and non-lymphotropic
viruses. The AIDS viruses do not cause leukemia and do not immortalize
T-cells.
different agents (HTLV and AIDS virus), which also have distinct biological
properties and pathology, should be distinguished by appropriate names.

There is no doubt in my mind that the two structurally greatly

As pointed out by Dr. Kingsbury, unlike classification nomenclature is
essentially arbitrary.  We usually honor the right of a pioneer investigator
to name newly discovered virus(es) and readily follow, adopt and use the
original (sometimes arbitrary) designations. Idith such an attitude in order
to find the simplest solution in the current debate, one could suggest to
combine the two independently assigned original  names LAV and HTLV-I11 into
one,HTLAV.  This would certainly give credit to and acknowledge the contri-
butions of both groups (Gallo's and Montagnier's).  Rut, as you know, there
is strong objection against the use of abbreviations like AIDS and LA by
cl i ni ci ans.

I appreci ate thei r concern and respect thei r view.

To most adequately describe and name LA/AIDS associated viruses, we would
like to consider those major biological properties which are uniquely
shared.  The predominant immune defect in AIDS is the defective T-cell

O Litton LITTON BIONETICS, INC. 0 Basic Research Program

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function due primarily to the destruction of T4 cells, the principal
biological effect of these cytopathogenic retroviruses. Therefore, the new
name I am proposing should be:

Human T-Lymphocyte-Destroying Virus (HTLDV)

The various isolates can be designated as:

Bethesda strain - HTLDV/B

Paris (Pasteur) strain - HTLDV/P

San Francisco strain - HTLDV/S

This nomenclature is not very different from HTLAV (hypothetically proposed
above) or HTLV-I11 (the most commonly used), and it should not be objectionable.
Most importantly, this nomencl ature a1 1 ows the requi red distinction of
AIDS virus from human T-cell leukemia virus (HTLV).
convenient way of classifying the existing subtypes as well  as future
isolates.  Finally,  it is readily adaptable for naming human AIDS related
vi ruses i sol ated from other species.

It also provides us a

Si ncerely ,

Stephen Oroszlan, Ph.0.
Di rector, Laboratory of Molecular

Virology and Carcinogenesis

SO/ j c

cc: Dr. John Coffin

Dr. Max Essex
Dr. Robert Gallo
Dr. Natalie Teich
Dr. Kumao Toyoshirna .+
Dr. Ash1 ey Haase h-
Dr. Jay Levy ~
Dr. Luc Montagnierl
Dr. Howard Temin
Dr. Peter Vogt -
Dr. Robin Weiss .