Current view on the perspectives of interferon therapy.

In recent years, impressive progress has been made towards the understanding of the molecular biology of interferon. Unfortunately, this progress was not accompanied by a parallel elucidation of the role of interferon in the animal organism. The feeling prevails that what we know about interferon today is only the peak of an iceberg showing interferon types and subtypes as a part of an insufficiently delineated system of cell-regulatory polypeptides (lymphokines, hormones) acting in a concerted way with other regulatory cells (such as NK-cells, macrophages) and their products (such as IL-2 etc.). An imbalance of this system may probably itself lead to disease (autoimmune diseases) and its disturbed functioning may hinder the therapeutic exploitation of its components in substitutive therapy (cancer).