Interferon and its first clinical trial: looking behind the scenes.

On the morning of 25 March 1980, there was unusual activity at Glasgow airport's Customs. A parcel containing a bottle of the most valuable drug in the world, interferon, had just arrived from Denmark. Hailed as a possible cure for cancer, interferon was intended for the experimental treatment of two young patients with advanced cancer at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow.' The event stirred widespread attention in the British press in the late seventies and early eighties, and was part of a global media hype of interferon's promise as a "magic bullet" against cancer.2 Some typical headlines were: "The drug with a value beyond price"3 and "The miracle cure of the future?".4 The euphoria surrounding interferon faded when it appeared that the drug's performance in large-scale cancer trials had been disappointing, and that it often produced severe side effects in patients.5 Interferon had hit the headlines for the first time in Britain about twenty years earlier. In May 1958, Alick Isaacs, a virus researcher at the National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), Mill Hill, London, announced the finding of an inhibitor of virus growth, named interferon. Subsequently, the press reported the discovery of a substance which might one day play an important part in the fight against viruses, a potential new "antiviral penicillin". This possibility was an important incentive for the immediate start of negotiations between the Medical Research Council (MRC), which was responsible for NIMR's activities, and a