Minireviews
The Interferons: 50 Years after Their Discovery, There Is Much More to Learn*

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The interferons (IFNs) and their receptors represent a subset of the class 2 α-helical cytokines that have been in chordates for millions of years. This brief review focuses on the discovery and purification of interferons, cloning of human IFN-α and IFN-β, interferon receptors, activities and therapeutic uses of interferons, and the side effects of interferons.

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This minireview will be reprinted in the 2007 Minireview Compendium, which will be available in January, 2008. These studies were supported by the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology, by United States Public Health Services Grants RO1-CA46465 from the National Cancer Institute and RO1-AI36450 and RO1-AI43369 from NIAID, National Institutes of Health, and by PBL Biomedical Laboratories. This is the first article of four in the Interferon Minireview Series.

The on-line version of this article (available at http://www.jbc.org) contains supplemental Table 1 and Figs. 1–5.