Word: interferon
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Still, researchers now had enough interferon to move studies out of the laboratory and into the clinic. In 1972 Virologist Thomas Merigan, of Stanford University, and a group of British researchers began studying IF's effect on the common cold. Soviet doctors were claiming success in warding off respiratory infections with weak sprays of IF made in a Moscow laboratory. Merigan and his colleagues gave 16 volunteers a nasal spray of interferon one day before and three days after they were exposed to common cold viruses. Another 16 volunteers were subjected to the same viruses without any protection. The results...
...mechanism of IF's defense against viruses has also emerged. Explains Mathilde Krim, a researcher at Manhattan's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center: "Interferon is a kind of chemical Paul Revere." When a virus invades a cell, instead of turning out the proteins needed to sustain the cell and other parts of the body, the manufacturing plant begins to produce carbon copies of the virus. Eventually bloated with the alien bodies, the cell almost literally comes apart at the seams and dies, spilling out its cargo of new viruses, which promptly move toward healthy cells to repeat the process...
...Enter interferon. The initial infection somehow triggers the first cell into producing IF. In turn, the interferon assumes the role of an intercellular messenger; it passes through the cell membrane and moves on to warn surrounding cells of the viral invasion. The healthy cells respond by producing antiviral proteins, which meet any invader head on. The entering virus will not be able to replicate within the new cell; if it does manage to reproduce, its progeny find that they are unable to leave the cell. The cycle of infection is broken...
...small band of interferon researchers were able to produce or get their hands on enough interferon to analyze its nature, but the stuff was far too scarce or any significant tests on humans. Most of the credit for relieving that acute shortage goes to a stubborn Finnish virologist, Kari Cantell, who proudly admits that "interferon has been my hobby and main scientific interest for over 20 years." Cantell began his career by studying the role of leukocytes, or white blood cells, in fighting infection. He became intrigued when he learned from other researchers in 1961 that these cells could produce...
...white cells and partly purified to destroy the virus. What remains is a highly impure IF preparation; even after it is partly purified it consists of only one part IF for every 999 parts of other substances. To purify it totally is both impractical (99% of the interferon is destroyed) and prohibitively expensive. By last year Cantell and a small staff were turning out 400 billion units annually (one unit is the amount of IF that protects half of a cell culture in a laboratory plate from being destroyed by a test virus). That may sound like...