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Document<br />

17<br />

<strong>Structure</strong> and Functional Studies of Interferon: A Solid Foundation for<br />

Rational <strong>Drug</strong> <strong>Design</strong><br />

Michael A. Jarpe<br />

Cambridge NeuroScience, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts<br />

Carol H. Pontzer<br />

University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland<br />

Brian E. Szente * and Howard M. Johnson<br />

University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida<br />

I. Introduction<br />

The interferons (IFNs) were discovered in 1957 <strong>by</strong> Isaacs and Lindenman when they observed that a<br />

substance secreted <strong>by</strong> virally infected cells could protect other cells from viral infection [1a]. They<br />

called this substance interferon and found that it was a protein that caused uninfected cells to produce<br />

other proteins that made them resistant.<br />

Page 435<br />

Researchers since then have been finding a growing family of structurally related molecules: the<br />

interferons. Through the years, the interferons have been given many different names including immune,<br />

fibroblast, leukocyte, Type I, and Type II interferons. The recognized nomenclature includes alpha, beta,<br />

omega, tau, and gamma (α, β, ω, τ, and γ) interferons. Alpha, beta, omega, and tau all belong to the<br />

similar Type I subclass. Gamma is the sole member of the Type II or immune interferon class. The Type<br />

I interferons all share a greater sequence homology to each other than they do to IFN-γ (for a recent<br />

general review of the IFNs, see Reference 1b).<br />

The IFNs exert their actions on cells via cell surface receptors. Type I IFNs share the IFN Type I<br />

receptor (IFN-R1) while IFN-γ has its own unique Type II receptor. The signal transduction pathways of<br />

Type I and Type II<br />

* Current affiliation: Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.<br />

http://legacy.netlibrary.com/nlreader/nlReader.dll?bookid=12640&filename=Page_435.html [4/9/2004 12:10:29 AM]

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