Update on thymosin
Medicine is entering an age of immunopharmacology, says Allan L. Goldstein, PhD, codiscoverer of thymosin, a semipurified extract of the thymus gland.Goldstein now is professor and chairman of the Department of Biochemistry, George Washington University Medical Center, Washington, DC. He and the late Abraham White, PhD, isolated thymosin at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, in 1965.Today, according to Goldstein, in addition to trials sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at five centers, more than 150 other research teams in the United States and Europe are testing thymosin's effectiveness at stimulating T lymphocyte immune responses in animals and plants with cancer, infectious diseases, and other disorders associated with immune suppression or imbalance (JAMA [MEDICAL NEWS] 1977;237:429-438).So far, Goldstein told an American Cancer Society seminar in Daytona Beach, Fla, two randomized trials have been completed with thymosin fraction 5, which contains a family