In Thursday's editions, an article about Dr. Robert C. Gallo, one of the world's leading AIDS researchers, misstated the relationship between the new Columbus Center and the University of Maryland. The Columbus Center is owned and operated by Columbus Center Development Inc., a private, non-profit organization. When Columbus Center opens, it will house the relocated Center of Marine Biotechnology, which is part of the university.
The Sun regrets the errors.
Dr. Robert C. Gallo, considered one of the world's leading AIDS researchers, said yesterday that he is exploring the possibility of leaving the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda and setting up a virology laboratory at a university -- possibly the University of Maryland here.
But Dr. Gallo, whose departure from the NCI would end a 30-year career there, said he has not entered formal negotiations with any institution and is still talking with academic leaders in several cities, including Baltimore, to see where he might feel comfortable.
"I'm just seeing what it's like at different places," Dr. Gallo said. "Maryland is not the only place I've been talking to. There are no formal negotiations started, no contracts."
Dr. Gallo's move, if it did materialize, would instantly give the University of Maryland one of the most famous, if controversial, names in contemporary medical research.
It would also come at a time when UM is rapidly expanding its physical plant and research scope in a bid to move into the forefront of biotechnology and the life sciences. Its teaching hospital, the University of Maryland Medical Center, recently opened a new wing for cancer care and other inpatient services.
At the Inner Harbor, the university will soon open the Christopher Columbus Center for marine biological studies.
And in an old Hutzler's warehouse, it is developing a $50 million Medical Biotechnology Center where researchers and "biotech" companies will try to translate scientific discoveries into new treatments that can be brought to the marketplace.
lTC The center, due to open in the spring, will contain 70 laboratories.
Dr. Gallo, 57, has visited Baltimore twice in the past month to meet with university officials, according to Dr. Edmund Tramont, director of the University of Maryland's Medical Biotechnology Center.
If Dr. Gallo decided to join Maryland's faculty, he would most likely set up a laboratory at the new biotechnology center.
"We're on his list but we haven't entered into any negotiations with him," Dr. Tramont said.
"He's one of the most extraordinarily innovative scientists in the whole world. His track record has proven that. Based on what I see continuing to come out of his lab, he hasn't slowed down a bit."
In recent weeks, several leading scientists at the cancer institute have announced their intentions to resign, saying they have become frustrated with the intrusion of politics into science and the diminishing esteem with which the public holds government.
Yesterday, Dr. Gallo said he shares some of those frustrations, but wishes mainly to devote more time to teaching and patient care while at the same time continuing his AIDS research.
At the cancer institute, he has had only limited contact with patients and students.
"I'd love to develop a center of human virology -- combining clinical with laboratory and epidemiology under one roof. There are places close to that in Europe, but I don't know any that combine the three together," he said.
"I'd like to leave a legacy. You get paternalistic as you get older."
Dr. Gallo, head of tumor cell biology at the NCI, discovered a leukemia virus that was the first virus known to cause a human cancer. He also found a second leukemia virus and a herpes virus that triggers a childhood illness.
But it was his role in characterizing the human immunodeficiency virus -- which causes AIDS -- that brought both public acclaim and controversy.
In 1983, Dr. Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in Paris reported discovering the AIDS virus. The next year, Dr. Gallo said that his lab, too, had discovered the virus -- and the two shared credit for a pivotal finding that led to a blood test that detects infection.
Just as important, the test is used to eliminate contaminated blood from the blood supply -- an achievement that has likely spared thousands of surgery patients from getting infected through blood transfusions.
It also set the stage for research into possible vaccines.
Controversy erupted when Dr. Montagnier charged that Dr. Gallo did not acknowledge using viral samples from the French laboratory to win a U.S. patient for the AIDS blood test.
Dr. Gallo first denied that he used the French strain, but later acknowledged that his viral cultures were accidentally contaminated with the Pasteur Institute's samples. Neither side, he said, knew about the contamination when it occurred.