December 28, 2008

History and Discovery of Transfer Factors

By innetent

Several very important discoveries regarding immune system functioning and health have been made in the past 100 years. In general, the emphasis has rested on finding substances that can directly attack invaders, as is the case with antibiotics and many antiviral drugs. Less emphasis has been placed on ways to help the individual’s own immune system deal with foreign threats. Let’s begin by looking at two such important discoveries – antibiotics and transfer factors – and discuss how these discoveries have affected the way that we deal with disease, and the roles they will likely play in the future of medicine.

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In 1928, in a laboratory in London , Alexander Fleming observed that a common species of mold known as Penicillium was capable of killing bacteria in Petri dishes. By all accounts, Dr. Fleming didn’t intend to discover an antibiotic. He returned to his lab after some time away and found that the bacteria he was culturing didn’t grow within a narrow zone around the fringes of a pesky mold that contaminated his samples. He probably wasn’t the first to observe this phenomenon, but he was the first to pursue an understanding of just how the mold prevented bacterial growth. Dr. Fleming identified the component of the mold with antibacterial properties and labeled it, “penicillin”. It would be another 15 years – during the 1940s — before researchers realized the full potential of penicillin and figured out how to turn Dr. Fleming’s discovery into a mass producible treatment for disease. And so began an era in which rates of death due to minor infections and communicable bacteria plummeted.

In 1949, at a time when penicillin and the sulfa drugs, antibiotics developed in Germany , were gaining reputations as life savers, a tuberculosis researcher named Dr. H Sherwood Lawrence made another important discovery in disease management. He extracted intracellular fluid from white blood cells in patients who had been exposed to tuberculosis (TB). He then injected the contents of these cells into non-exposed patients. In doing so, he protected them from contracting TB. He called the mystery components “transfer factor”, as they somehow transferred immunity from one patient to the next.

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At the time that transfer factors were discovered our understanding of disease states was quite limited and the ability to extract transfer factors for use in treatment beyond single cases was not available. The miraculous effects of antibiotics were becoming widely known at the time and they took center stage. Fifty years later, with improvements in our understanding of disease states and vast improvements in technology, transfer factors have now emerged on the scene as potentially powerful weapons against disease – including diseases resistant to, or untouchable by, antibiotics.

Immunologists suspect that transfer factors are small chains of amino acids and bits of RNA that contain the instructions that the immune system uses to recognize and fight foreign invaders and cancer cells. As new immune cells are born, they pick up transfer factors and read them like notes left by immune cells before them. Each time a person becomes ill and their immune system learns how to battle a pathogen, transfer factors are created and are used the next time around to make the battle against the pathogen more efficient.

Originally, blood was the only source of transfer factor. Dr. Lawrence’s discovery came in the midst of the discovery and use of antibiotics. Transfer factors have been used throughout the antibiotic age in different regions of the world such as China, Poland, Italy and others, but never have been available commercially in the past due to the lack of technology. It was not until the mid 1980’s that two researchers came up with the idea that transfer factor may also be present in colostrum (mother’s first milk). The confirmation of this discovery was awarded a patent in 1989, and colostrum is now the best source of transfer factor.

In October 2007 at the Salt Lake City Convention, 4Life Research announced the discovery of immune activity in a weight range of molecules that are significantly smaller than transfer factors.

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Transfer factors are molecules in a weight class between 3,500 – 12,000 daltons that help the immune system recognize, respond to, and remember outside threats. Although scientists have known that smaller molecules than transfer factors existed within cow colostrum, their significance in terms of immune activity has been unknown until now.

2 years earlier in 2005, 4Life Chief Executive Officer David Lisonbee and the Research and Development department began studying these low weight molecules. After two years of research, 4Life clinical findings now indicate that molecules in a weight range between 250 — 3,000 daltons play important regulatory roles in the immune system. 4Life extracted and concentrated these patent-pending nanofraction molecules from cow colostrum for their proprietary NanoFactor™ extract, combining NanoFactor with their exclusive Transfer Factor E-XF™ extract of transfer factors from cow colostrum and chicken egg yolks to produce 4Life Transfer Factor® Tri-Factor™ Formula, the most comprehensive approach to immune system support available today. “I don’t know of another company in our category,” said 4Life Chief Scientific Officer Calvin McCausland, Ph.D. “In 2004, we were the first company to combine transfer factors from cow colostrum and chicken egg yolks. In 2005, we introduced RioVida®, the world’s only transfer factor beverage. Now, the discovery of new immune activity in nanofractions. When it comes to scientific innovation, there’s simply no comparison to 4Life.” 4Life Transfer Factor, Transfer Factor Plus®, and RioVida are now fortified with the new Tri-Factor Formula. “We’re taking Tri-Factor Formula to the world because no other product represents such a unique and indispensable opportunity for a quality life,” remarked 4Life President Steve Tew.

David Lisonbee: “At the end of the day, our distributors can rest assured that 4Life will stay a good pace ahead of the curve in the areas of science, service, and success.” Why is it important? Tri-Factor Formula provides exactly what your immune system needs for optimal health. A healthy, intelligent immune system can: (1) quickly recognize the problem; (2) respond to the problem with a boost of immune cell activity or a calming down of immune cell activity—depending on what your body needs. What is the opinion of health experts? “The intelligence of 4Life Transfer Factor, combined with the intuition of NanoFactor, creates a superior product that helps the immune system know when to balance, when to boost, and when to calm down. What we have discovered and formulated delivers real benefits to 4Life Distributors and customers.”