Dr. Jean Lindenmann, a Swiss scientist who, with a colleague, discovered interferon, the powerful antiviral substance used to treat some cancers as well as hepatitis C and multiple sclerosis, died on Jan. 15 in hospice care in Zurich. He was 90. The cause was complications of prostate cancer, his son Christian said. Dr. Lindenmann made his discovery in 1957 when he was a postdoctoral student at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, working with Dr. Alick Isaacs. The two began studying a puzzling phenomenon: If they killed viruses by heating them and then added those dead viruses to cells, the cells resisted subsequent infection with live viruses. Was it because the dead viruses tied up entry portals in the cells, preventing live viruses from getting in? Were the dead viruses secreting something that acted like a viral version of an antibiotic? The answer, they discovered, was neither. It turned out that the dead viruses prompted the cells to resist infection by secreting a substance the scientists named interferon, because it interfered. Researchers around the world leapt to investigate further and soon discovered an entire family of these substances, all produced by cells in response to viruses, either dead viruses or live ones. Interferons turned out to be too toxic to be used routinely, as antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections. But they are used to treat specific cancers and other diseases. After his discovery, Dr. Lindenmann returned to his original institution, the University of Zurich, saying he wanted to leave further study of interferons to others. Instead, he turned to another puzzling phenomenon, asking why some strains of mice were resistant to influenza viruses that quickly killed other strains of mice. The answer turned out to be interferon again, but acting in an indirect way. Again, the viral infection made the cells produce interferon, but here, the interferon switched on a gene in the resistant mice. That gene then directed production of a protein that protected against the influenza virus. Despite his efforts to study something other than interferon, Dr. Lindenmann ended up with another interferon discovery. He later wrote that “the sad truth” was that after two decades of work trying to figure out why one strain of mice was resistant to the virus, it turned out to be “interferon related.” Dr. Lindenmann was born on Sept. 18, 1924, to a Swiss father and Parisian mother living in Zagreb, Croatia. After a few years, the family moved to Zurich, where Dr. Lindenmann grew up. He graduated from medical school in the 1950s and served in the Swiss Army. He married Ellen Buechler in 1957. She died in 2007. In addition to his son Christian, Dr. Lindenmann is survived by another son, Jean-Michel, and four grandchildren. -Gina Kolata
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 11:31:33 +0000
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