Interferon advances
"The use of poly I:C offers the first hope for a practical application of the interferon mechanism in clinical medicine," Maurice Hilleman, PhD, told participants at the Third International Symposium on Medical and Applied Virology.
Dr. Hilleman, of the Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research, West Point, Pa, spoke for one of two groups of investigators who reported the first clinical evidence of interferon stimulation and disease control by poly I:C (polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid).
In a collaborative study conducted by Merck and Co. and the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, measurable serum titers were produced in two of four cancer patients given the drug intravenously.
The second group of investigators, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Bethesda, Md, reported healthy male volunteers given the drug intranasally showed a reduction in virus shedding when challenged with a rhinovirus.
Poly I:C, a synthetic doublestranded polynucleotide, is one of
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