ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION In 1954, two Japanese virologists discovered that the inoculation of an inactivated virus into rabbit skin induces some inhibitory factors against viral proliferation, and in 1957 (1), a British virologist and a Swiss scientist observed a viral interference in which the existence of an inactivated virus affects the growth of a live virus and coined the term “interferon” (IFN) (2). The therapeutic effectiveness of IFN has been evaluated in various diseases, and IFN has been confirmed to be useful for the treatment of malignant tumors such as renal cell carcinoma and multiple myeloma (3). Today, the most well-known use of IFN is in the treatment of chronic hepatitis C since IFN therapy is the only way to completely eliminate the hepatitis C virus from a patient’s body (4).
