Interferon For several years, scientists have been testing a substance called interferon (干扰素),a potential wonder drug that is proving to be effective in treating a variety of ailments, including virus infections, bacteria infections, and tumors. To date, the new drug has provoked no negative reaction of sufficient significance to discourage its use. But in spite of its success, last year only one gram was produced in the entire world. The reason for the scarcity lies in the structure of interferon. A species specific protein, the interferon produced from one animal species cannot be used in treating another animal species. In other words, to treat human beings, only interferon produced by human beings may be used. The drug is produced by infecting white blood cells with a virus. Fortunately, it is so potent that the amount given each patient per injection is very small. Unlike antibiotics(抗菌素), interferon does not attack germs directly. Instead, it makes unaffected cells resistant to infection, and prs the multiplication of viruses within cells. As you might conclude, one of the most dramatic uses of interferon has been in the treatment of cancer. Dr. Hans Strander, research physician at Sweden’’s famous Karolinska Institute, has treated more than one hundred cancer patients with the new drug. Among a group of selected patients who had undergone surgical procedures for advanced cancer, half were given conventional treatments and the other half were given interferon. The survival rate over a three-year period was 70 percent among those who were treated with interferon as compared with only 10 to 30 percent among those who had received the conventional treatments. In the United States, a large-scale project supported by the American Cancer Society is now underway. If the experiment is successful, interferon could become one of the greatest medical discoveries of our time. Interferon has not been widely used because it is still very erous.