Clinical Uses of Lymphokines Workshop Summary

Abstract

Clinical application of lymphokine research, as with other growing fields of biomedical science, is expected to yield information of diagnostic, prognostic, nosological and therapeutic significance. There is an understandable impatience to realise these aims: yet, as this workshop illustrated, evaluation of the clinical significance of lymphokines requires application of numerical methods of measuring lymphokine activity, of quantifying clinical deviations from normality, and of specifying the intended therapeutic activity of molecules whose pleotropic, synergistic and antagonistic interactions were brought into particular prominence at this Conference. The twenty abstracts and presentations at this workshop dealt with preclinical in vitro studies and animal models; human lymphokine studies of diagnostic and prognostic interest; and the therapeutic investigation of lymphokines in patients.