Word: interferon
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Whereas traditional drug companies focus on developing chemical compounds, the biotech industry prefers to use biological ones--hormones, proteins and other substances that either already exist in the body or can be created from scratch. Examples include interferon, the clot buster tPA and the new breast-cancer drug Herceptin...
Taking their cue from AIDS research, doctors have discovered that a cocktail of drugs may be more effective than a single medication against hepatitis C. Until now interferon--injected three times a week--was the only treatment. But studies show that adding the antiviral pill ribavirin can more than double the odds of eradicating the liver disease. And for those who suffer a relapse, the combo increases the chances for a successful treatment fivefold...
...last week approved a combination of potent antiviral drugs for chronic hepatitis C, the deadly liver disease that afflicts 4 million Americans. The therapy is six months of interferon injections plus oral doses of the drug ribavirin.There are serious side effects, such as birth defects, but the treatment reduces the hepatitis virus to undetectable levels in 45% of patients, vs. only 5% of those on standard therapy...
...entirely self-effacing whimsy. Like every good researcher--and every responsible science journalist--he knows all too well that most drugs that work in lab animals turn out to be duds in humans. The field is littered with "magic bullets" that failed, among them monoclonal antibodies, tumor necrosis factor, interferon and interleukin-2. While all were initially hyped as potential cure-alls, they have turned out to have only modest usefulness in the war on cancer. At best, says Dr. Allen Oliff, Merck & Co.'s chief of cancer research, no more than 10% or 20% of agents tried in mice...
...drug for MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS called Copaxone reduces the frequency of attacks without causing flulike symptoms or many of the other troubling side effects associated with today's interferon-based drugs...