MR-I

Just a year ago, two doctors announced that they had isolated a virus which causes one type of common cold (TIME, Jan. 5). It was a good start, but there was a lot of slow work ahead. Drs. Norman H. Topping and Leon T. Atlas, at the National Institute of Health at Bethesda, Md., had to keep testing their virus, called MR-I,* on human volunteers. They put the virus, kept alive in fertilized chicken eggs, into the noses of inmates of District of

Columbia's Lorton Reformatory, then had to wait and see if the volunteers developed the expected thick "sinusitis-like" type of cold. Dr. Atlas and Biochemist George A. Hottle started looking for a way to speed up the testing process. Finally, in last week's issue of Science, they reported success.

After trying "more things than you can shake a stick at," Drs. Atlas and Hottle found that tryptophane (an amino acid) and perchloric acid changed the color of a solution if the virus was present. The color deepened from pinkish brown to dark brown according to the quantity of virus present; if there was no virus, the solution stayed clear. The exact strength of the virus can be fixed by using a spectrophotometer, which measures color by comparing it with a standard. The researchers have been able to make as many as 112 tests a day; normally they do 56.

Under previous methods, a day's work like that would have taken two years.

Human beings will still be used as guinea pigs. They will be needed for experiments, for many questions are still unanswered. Is there any drug that will do any good for a cold? Can a vaccine be developed for MRi? Just how long is a cold "catching?" What effect do low temperatures and wet weather have? The new test does not mean that a cure has been found for the common cold. But the search has been speeded up.

It was a big fortnight for Dr. Atlas, who is 27 and now head of the war on colds at Bethesda. The week before the MRi announcement, he married blonde Bacteriologist Maxine McCall, who worked with him in the experiments. Dr. Atlas, who used to catch a cold every two weeks until he started wearing a special face mask while making tests, headed south with his bride for what he hoped would be a cold-free honeymoon.

* MR for minor respiratory; i means that it was the first cold virus they isolated, suggests that there are others still unknown.

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