Word: interferon
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...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...
Today Cuba is one of the world's largest producers of a recombinant vaccine against hepatitis B. It is the only producer of a vaccine against the bacterium that causes meningitis B, a particularly nasty form of the disease. It also makes a diverse line of pharmaceuticals: interferon for cancer treatment, epidermal growth factor for wound healing, streptokinase for heart attacks and monoclonal antibodies capable of diagnosing everything from pregnancy to infection with the AIDS virus...
...Cuban romance with biotechnology began in 1980, when a visiting U.S. physician regaled Castro with tales of the latest wonder drug, interferon. Intrigued, Castro directed Dr. Manuel Limonta, a young Cuban hematologist and immunologist, to set up a facility to manufacture the protein. At first, Limonta and his small staff used human blood cells to produce interferon. But soon the advantages of recombinant DNA technology became apparent, and Limonta started making interferon in giant vats of genetically engineered yeast...