Word: interferon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...noted among other evidence the response of his first breast cancer patient: "She had a mass under her left arm, and couldn't raise her arm. Within 48 hours of her first injection, she could lift it." Another breast cancer victim is in remission after 15 months of interferon therapy. Gutterman also reports a wide range of sensitivity among patients, some showing improvement within 48 to 72 hours and a 50% reduction in the size of their tumors within three to four weeks after IF therapy. One patient with myeloma received interferon for three months with no apparent effect...
Gutterman's application to the A.C.S. reached the desk of Frank Rauscher, who before becoming the society's research chief in 1976 had been director of the National Cancer Institute for five years. At the institute he had been urged repeatedly to "do something about interferon." But Rauscher, himself a virologist, had moved cautiously. He did send an NCI team to Sweden to look at Strander's IF tests with bone cancer, and the institute co-sponsored a 1975 interferon conference in Manhattan. But during his tenure, Rauscher increased the NCI commitment to interferon by a scant $1 million yearly...
...July 1978, as Rauscher surveyed the evidence assembled on his desk, his outlook had changed. New data from Strander, with better controls, were impressive. There were reports by other researchers of positive IF effects on tumors. Cantell had upped his production of interferon, and the evidence accompanying Gutterman's request for $1.5 million to buy IF was persuasive. Rauscher was convinced. He left his office, went upstairs to the A.C.S. executive offices and declared: "It's time to bite the bullet on interferon." The big drive for IF had begun...
...effect, it was like starting an armaments program without fully understanding how the weaponry works. If interferon is the body's Paul Revere, designed to warn against viral invasion and stimulate the defense forces, why does it also appear to work against cancer? Though viruses are suspect in some human cancers, interferon also seems to work against tumors generally thought to be caused by nonviral agents such as radiation and chemicals...
...cell division. Unlike most cancer drugs it does not kill malignant cells outright, but it somehow alters them so they stop proliferating. Another important difference: rather than killing cancer cells when they are rapidly dividing, IF works best when they are dormant and in the so-called resting stage. Interferon also seems to issue a call to arms to the general immune system. It marshals macrophages, scavenger cells that gobble up foreign material, and increases both the numbers and activity of another specialized group of lymphocytes, known as natural killer cells. All types of interferon boost the defense system...