Word: interleukins
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...therapies arising from recent research involve the chemical signals, or lymphokines, that regulate the immune system. These extraordinary proteins have a bewildering array of names and functions. There are, for instance, three types of interferon -- alpha, beta and gamma. Alpha alone comes in more than a dozen varieties. Interleukins are similarly prolific. "We are already up to interleukin-7 and interleukin-8," says Immunologist Lloyd Old, of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, "and one can expect that we will go on from there." Scientists have so far discovered at least five different colony-stimulating factors, which cause...
...Interleukin-2 has shown promising results in treating advanced skin and kidney cancers. In fact, says Gutterman, there appears to be "tremendous synergy" between alpha interferon and IL-2 in attacking cancer cells. While IL-2 works to make the killer cells more potent, he explains, they "have to recognize something unique on the surface of the cancer cell in order to kill it." That something is an antigen, and interferon seems to make it more "visible" to the killer cells...
...most promising advances in treatment for the dread disease. Yet two articles published in last week's New England Journal of Medicine, while containing caveats, seemed reason for guarded optimism. Both dealt with a controversial treatment known as adoptive immunotherapy, which involves the use of a naturally produced substance, interleukin-2 (IL- 2), to bolster a patient's immune system. Both reported striking improvements in some patients with advanced cases of cancer...
Reinherz and his associates last February reported that they had discovered a new hormone, Interleukin 4-a, which they claimed could be effective in combating cancer...
...scientific community is not alone in the kind of professional "pressure" cited by former Harvard-affiliate Claudio Milanese to explain his fabrication of the existence of interleukin-4a, an immune system stimulant. Science is unique, however, in that the research process is predicated on the myth of its autonomy from such pressures. Hence the shock value and significance of disclosures of misconduct. The scientific community is apparently not in need of preventive medicine for the misconduct of its members. Rather, self-scrutiny should determine to what extent such fraud is a problem in the scientific community at large...