Low frequency of neutralizing antibodies against natural interferon-β during adjuvant therapy for Japanese patients with melanoma

Abstract The incidence of therapy-induced neutralizing inferferon-β (IFN-β ) antibodies was investigated in 41 Japanese patients with melanoma treated with a combination of chemotherapy and subcutaneous injections of natural IFN-β. Only one patient (2.4%) developed anti-IFN-β antibodies. This finding differs from those of previous studies with Caucasian patients in which subcutaneous injections of natural IFN-β resulted in a high incidence of anti-IFN-β antibodies. This difference may be related to ethnic group of patients, treatment schedule, pharmacological preparation of IFN-β and/or technical assay system used in each study.