What is 'interferon therapy'?

What is 'interferon therapy'?

Christian Cable, Dr. Ryan Osborne & Dr. Noam Z. Drazin (Cancer Experts) gives expert video advice on: What is 'pre-medication'?; What is 'interferon therapy'?; What is 'gene therapy'? and more...

Interferons are a normal part of your immune system and interferons are a target or at least an option for certain therapies of certain diseases and I think the most common disease that we use interferons for are melanomas. Metastatic melanoma or the melanoma or skin cancer. The reason why we use interferons is that it has been shown that enhancing the immune system is effective in at least trying to attack the existence of metastatic melanoma or melanoma that has been advanced in the body. And the use of interferons in order to boost the immune system has been utilized for this disease. It's not a very well tolerated treatment it actually leads to enhanced production of fevers, body aches, lots of symptoms that most patients can not tolerate. So it's not a treatment that I see as gaining a lot of popularity and I believe that there are other more novel agents that are out there to enhance the immune system that will be third or fourth generation type interferons that will necessarily be able to or will be able to improve on that particular type of therapy.