The monkeys belong to the university's Institute for Human Gene Therapy, directed by a youthful-looking veteran of the gene therapy wars, James M. Wilson. Dr. Wilson has corralled the resources to pursue a broad-based strategy. Not for him the gamble of going after a single disease, with heavy odds of failure. He is pursuing a wide range of maladies with a variety of methods. Mouse rooms and monkey colonies, where gene insertion techniques must be tested before being tried in patients, do not come cheap.
Viruses are both the hope and despair of genetic engineers.
Most approaches to gene therapy use viruses as the vehicle to convey genes to target cells. The virus's harmful genes are stripped out and a therapeutic gene inserted in their place. In the mid-1980's, when Dr. Wilson joined the field, a disabled mouse virus was everyone's favorite candidate. But the virus infected only cells that were dividing. The next candidate was adenovirus, a cause of the common cold.