Albinterferon (alb-IFN, trade name Albuferon) is a

recombinant fusion protein Fusion proteins or chimeric (kī-ˈmir-ik) proteins (literally, made of parts from different sources) are proteins created through the joining of two or more genes that originally coded for separate proteins. Translation of this ''fusion gene'' r ...

drug consisting of

interferon alpha The type-I interferons (IFN) are cytokines which play essential roles in inflammation, immunoregulation, tumor cells recognition, and T-cell responses. In the human genome, a cluster of thirteen functional IFN genes is located at the 9p21.3 cyt ...

(IFN-α) linked to human

albumin Albumin is a family of globular proteins, the most common of which are the serum albumins. All the proteins of the albumin family are water-soluble, moderately soluble in concentrated salt solutions, and experience heat denaturation. Albumins ...

. Conjugation to human albumin prolongs the half-life of the IFN-α to about 6 days, allowing to dose it every two to four weeks. The drug was under investigation as an alternative to

pegylated PEGylation (or pegylation) is the process of both covalent and non-covalent attachment or amalgamation of polyethylene glycol (PEG, in pharmacy called macrogol) polymer chains to molecules and macrostructures, such as a drug, therapeutic protein ...

IFN-α-2a for the treatment of hepatitis C. In response to an FDA ruling,

Novartis Novartis AG is a Swiss-American multinational pharmaceutical corporation based in Basel, Switzerland and Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (global research).name="novartis.com">https://www.novartis.com/research-development/research-loc ...

and

Human Genome Sciences Human Genome Sciences (HGS) was a biopharmaceutical corporation founded in 1992 by Craig Venter, Alan Walton and Wally Steinberg. It uses the human DNA sequence to develop protein and antibody drugs. It had drugs under development to treat suc ...

announced on October 5, 2010 that they will cease development of the drug. A French expert in hepatitis treatment, Dr. Yves Benhamou, member of the steering committee for a clinical trial of the drug was detained on criminal fraud charges by the F.B.I. agents on 11-01-2010 as he attended a conference in Boston because he allegedly tipped off a hedge fund manager about setbacks in the clinical trials (two participants in the trial had developed lung disease and one of them died); he had a consulting relationship with a manager of the hedge fund. The manager sold his entire stake in Human Genome Sciences before it announced the setbacks in Jan. 2008 and avoided $30 million in losses.

References

Hepatitis C Cytokines {{antineoplastic-drug-stub