Virus Research Here Leads to $500,000 Study of Cold Causes

Polio virus research that won three University faculty members Nobel prizes has encouraged the setting up of a three-year $500,000 program of investigation into the causes of the common cold, also believed to be a virus. Part of the program may be carried on at the University.

O. Parker McComas, Chairman of the Common Cold Foundation of New York, sponsor of the program, outlined plans at a fund-raising meeting of New York bankers and industrialists, Wednesday. He told them that $425,000 of the total will be ear-marked for projects at Johns Hopkins, the Universities of Virginia and Illinois, and the University.

At the same meeting, Dr. Yale Kneeland, chairman of the foundation's scientific advisory committee, said that the possibilities of isolating the common cold virus and finding a remedy for it had increased because of the work on growing viruses outside the human body of John F. Enders, associate professor of Bacteriology and Immunology at the Medical School, Dr. Thomas H. Weller, Richard Pearson Strong Professor of Tropical Health at the School of Public Health, and Dr. Frederick C. Robbins, formerly their associate and now at the Western Reserve Medical School in Cleveland.

Dr. Robert S. Gohd, Ph.D. '52, research fellow in bacteriology, and the only one working on the common cold here, said he has not been offered a grant by the foundation. "They simply asked me about my work and whether I might need money for it in the future. They couldn't say anything definite, of course, because they have not raised the money."