Health news blog

Genetic Engineering

Interleukin and interferon are available in large amounts because scientists now “grow” them, using bacteria or yeast. Your white cells form interleukin, for example, under the control of your genes. A gene is another bit of chemical called DNA, containing the information the white cell needs to form interleukin. Through genetic engineering, scientists can take the gene for interleukin from a human cell and put it into a common germ. That germ grows in a vat much as yeast grows in a beer vat. Because the germ now carries that bit of human DNA, it then makes interleukin in large quantities. Scientists also are commercially manufacturing tumor necrosis factor and other T-cell substances that control the immune system.

Hybridoma

This bizarre hybrid is made up of two cells: the В cell, which provides antibodies, and a white-cell cancer called myeloma. By fusing two cells, you get a hybrid that produces antibodies and lives forever. And the hybrid can be made to produce antibodies to any virus or germ—even to a cancer. These are called monoclonal antibodies because they are specific to one particular germ or cancer. Hybridomas have produced antibodies to melanomas and colon and pancreatic cancers.

Norman J. Arnold, of Columbia, South Carolina, was diagnosed as having incurable pancreatic cancer in July 1982. He went to the Wistar Institute, a biological research institution in Philadelphia. There, the director, Dr. Hilary Koprowski, injected him with monoclonal antibodies against the cancer. His cancer receded. Mr. Arnold had no sign of the disease for 2.5 years.

“The future of immunotherapy is bright,” says Dr. Koprowski. “Monoclonal antibodies are the greatest medical tools developed in the last 50 years. They are in everybody’s lab.”

As research into the marvelous immune system continues, every scientist interviewed expressed the same optimism. Immunology will lift much of the burden of disease.

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