Dr. Arthur Gottlieb, Aids Researcher Submitted by N.O.V.A. July 2005 Times Picayune 06-9-1998 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Dr. A. Arthur Gottlieb, a New Orleans researcher who tried to develop for sale a naturally occurring compound to boost the immune systems of people with AIDS, died Sunday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston of a pulmonary embolus after surgery. He was 60. Dr. Gottlieb, chairman of the department of microbiology and immunology at Tulane University School of Medicine, also was the founder and president of Imreg Inc., which he established to further his immunology research, especially his investigations of substances that might help the body fight infection. Chief among these was IMREG-1, which Dr. Gottlieb discovered in 1980. It occurs naturally in healthy people's immune systems, he said, and seems to help them combat disease. Dr. Gottlieb, who also was a professor of medicine at Tulane, wanted to use IMREG-1 with antiviral drugs to fortify the immune system. Although reports from a 16-month clinical trial seemed promising, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1989 turned down the company's application to distribute the compound to seriously ill patients, saying the company would have to conduct more tests. In 1993, Imreg won permission to carry out more tests. But IMREG-1 has yet to receive FDA approval, said Ivy Kupec, an agency spokeswoman. Dr. Gottlieb was born in 1937 in Haifa, Palestine, which became Israel in 1948. His father, Jacob Gottlieb, was deputy agriculture minister of Palestine. After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science in New York City, he entered Columbia College. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year, he graduated with highest honors with distinction in chemistry. He also graduated from New York University School of Medicine, where he received the Alpha Omega Alpha First Prize for scholastic standing throughout his four years of study. Dr. Gottlieb went to Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston for his internship and junior residency. He joined the U.S. Public Health Service and was a clinical associate at the National Heart Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. In 1965, he was named a fellow in Harvard's biochemistry department. Three years later, he joined the Harvard Medical School faculty as an assistant professor of medicine. Dr. Gottlieb held that post for a year before moving to Rutgers University's Institute of Microbiology in Piscataway, N.J., where he stayed until leaving for Tulane in 1975. "He was a respected researcher," Tulane University Medical Center Chancellor John C. LaRosa said Monday. "This was a shock to us. He will be missed." Besides writing more than 100 scientific papers, Dr. Gottlieb was a fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American Academy of Microbiology, and a traveling fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. He was a member of the federal Breast Cancer Task Force. He received a National Institute of General Medicine Research Career Development Award and the Frances Stone Burns Award from the American Cancer Society. Survivors include his wife, Dr. Marise S. Gottlieb; two daughters, Mindy Gottlieb Davidson of Houston and Joanne Meredith Gottlieb of New York City; and two grandchildren. A funeral was held Monday at Riverside Chapel in New York City.