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Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 12:24 am
by JFH
raven wrote:... The interferons were originally aimed at HIV...
Are you sure Robin? I seem to remember hearing about bI long before HIV hit the streets.

Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 3:21 am
by raven
I think so, I seem to remember reading it a while ago but am willing to be corrected.
IFN’s were discovered in 1957 by two virologists working at the National Institute forMedical Research in London, who observed that a virus multiplying in the cells of an organism, or in culture cells, blocked infection of these same cells by other viruses, or provided what is known as viral interference. These scientists noted that the resistance came from a substance secreted by the infected cells and demonstrated that IFN was a protein that did not act directly on the viruses but caused the production of other antiviral proteins by the diseased cells and their neighbours
The only info I could find on the subject at short notice.

Robin