1982

A few meters from house 149, it was decided to build the Biological Research Center (CIB) to produce interferon, founded by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro. Thus, the first scientific-productive biotechnological institution was born and Cuba was included among the producing countries of this biomolecule. But since before the first researchers left for the United States and Finland, they had already begun to work at CENIC and later at CIB, another part of the group led by Dr. Luis Herrera Martínez and integrated, among others, by doctors Verena Muzio González and Lidia Inés Novoa, who would later assume prominent functions at the institution. This part of the group addressed the development of genetic engineering work for the cloning of interferon beta genes; then interferon alpha and finally gamma, almost half a decade later. The work of that precursor group of Cuban biotechnology represented something more than interferon itself: the style of dedication to work as a conception, and the idea of ​​prioritizing projects based on real needs and possibilities with a sustained commitment to a closed cycle until its completion. marketing and application at home and abroad. The research protocols initiated then covered, among others, severe acute, chronic active hepatitis B and their asymptomatic carriers; Laryngeal Papillomatosis and Breast Cancer.