Recreating an environment for clinical discovery.

Introduction The purpose of the first annual Emil J Freireich symposium was to celebrate life, creativity, and stories of medical discovery. Many of the stories were about J Freireich’s own discoveries, and many were about the discoveries he inspired others to make. The importance of these narratives lies not only in the discoveries themselves, but also in what they reveal about the nonlinear manner by which medical advances occur. This paper illustrates the role that J Freireich played in stimulating the clinical development of IFN-cs and, more broadly, in the early development of clinical cytokine research. In April 1975, J called and told me about a meeting that Mathilda Krim had organized in New York on a substance called IFN. Dr. Lee Clark informed J of the meeting, but no one in Developmental Therapeutics could attend, and J himselfcould only go for one day. He asked if I would be willing to attend the meeting. Not knowing what was to lie ahead, but knowing J’s wonderful instincts, I said, without hesitation, “I’ll be there.” That meeting changed my life. At that conference, I discussed with Mary Lasker a potential financial commitment to study the clinical effects of LEN in cancer based on the work by Hans Strander and Kari Cantell. She considered money “frozen en-ergy,” and eventually, with her resources, we unleashed a major study of the first biological growth inhibitor in the treatment of human malignancy.