IL-2: promiscuous cytokine or steady date
10 March 2002. Related: On the web.
Tracy Swan
ACRIA Update, Vol. 11, No. 1, Winter 2001/2002
Interleukin-2 (IL-2) is the immune-based therapy that has been most extensively studied in HIV.
Many people continue to be intrigued by its potential, yet questions about IL-2 remain unanswered, including the most basic one — is it an effective HIV therapy? IL-2 has also been called an immune booster, an immune modulator and T-cell growth factor.
A man-made form of IL-2 was first developed in the early 1980s as a treatment for certain cancers. Although IL-2 has been studied in people with HIV since the 1980s, it hasn’t been approved as a treatment for HIV disease.